
Book olT %*£? 

Copyright^ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT: 



BETWEEN THE LINES 



BETWEEN 
THE LINES 



BY 



BOYD CABLE 




NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

681 FIFTH AVENUE 



-p^ 
**£*- 



Copyright, 1915, 

BT 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 



7? 

• CI.A416346 



NOV II ISI5 



»o, / 






? 

FOREWORD 

This book, all of which has been written at 
the Front within sonnd of the German guns 
and for the most part within shell and rifle 
range, is an attempt to tell something of the 
manner of struggle that has gone on for months 
between the lines along the Western Front, 
and more especially of what lies behind and 
goes to the making of those cnrt and vague 
terms in the war communiques. I think that 
our people at Home will be glad to know more, 
and ought to know more, of what these bald 
phrases may actually signify, when, in the 
other sense, we read "between the lines," 

Of the people at Home — whom we at the 
Front have relied upon and looked to more than 
they may know — many have helped us in heap- 
ing measure of deed and thought and thought- 
fulness, while others may perhaps have failed 
somewhat in their full duty, because, as we have 
been told and re-told to the point of weariness, 
they "have not understood" and "do not 
realise" and "were never told." 



vi FOREWORD 

If this book brings anything of interest and 
pleasure to the first, and of understanding to 
the second, it will very fully have served its 
double purpose. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Advanced Trenches 1 

Shells 12 

The Mine 33 

Artillery Support 63 

'^Nothing to Report" 82 

The Promise op Spring 110 

The Advance 126 

A Convert to Conscription 144 

"Business as Usual" 166 

A Hymn of Hate 182 

The Cost 198 

A Smoker's Companion 220 

The Job op the Am. Col. 231 

The Signaller's Day 244 



BETWEEN THE LINES 



THE ADVANCED TRENCHES 

Being in some sort the fashion of story that may be read 
"Between the Lines" of the Official War Despatches. 

"Near Blank, on the Dash-dot front, a sec- 
tion of advanced trench changed hands several 
times, finally remaining in our possession." 

For perhaps the twentieth time in half an honr 
the look-out man in the advanced trench raised 
his head cautiously over the parapet and peered 
out into the darkness. A drizzling rain made 
it almost impossible to see beyond a few yards 
ahead, but then the German trench was not 
more than fifty yards off and the space between 
was criss-crossed and interlaced and a-bristle 
with the tangle of barb-wire defences erected by 
both sides. For the twentieth time the look- 
out peered and twisted his head sideways to 
listen, and for the twentieth time he was just 
lowering his head beneath the sheltering para- 
pet when he stopped and stiffened into rigidity. 
There was no sound apart from the sharp 

1 



2 BETWEEN THE UNES 

cracks of the rifles near at hand and running 
diminuendo along the trenches into a rising and 
falling stutter of reports, the frequent whine 
and whistle of the more distant bullets, and 
the quick hiss and "zipp" of the nearer ones, 
all sounds so constant and normal that the look- 
out paid no heed to them, put them, as it were, 
out of the focus of his hearing, and strained to 
catch the fainter but far more significant sound 
of a footstep squelching in the mud, the "snip" 
of a wire-cutter at work, the low "tang" of a 
jarred wire. 

A few hundred yards down the line, a dazzling 
light sprang out, hung suspended, and slowly 
floated down, glowing nebulous in the misty 
rain, and throwing a soft radiance and dusky 
shadows and gleaming lines of silver along the 
parapets and wire entanglements. 

Intent the look-out stared to his front for a 
moment, flung muzzle over the parapet and 
butt to shoulder, and snapped a quick shot at 
one of the darker blotches that lay prone be- 
yond the outer tangles of wire. The blotch 
jerked and sprawled, and the look-out shouted, 
slipped out the catch of his magazine cut-off, 
and pumped out the rounds as fast as fingers 
could work bolt and trigger, the stabbing 
flashes of the discharge lighting with sharp 



THE ADVANCED TRENCHES 3 

vivid glares his tense features, set teeth, and 
scowling eyes. There was a pause and stillness 
for the space of a couple of quick-drawn 
breaths, and then — pandemonium! 

The forward trench flamed and blazed with 
spouts of rifle-fire, its slightly curved length 
clearly defined from end to end by the spitting 
flashes. Verey lights and magnesium flares 
turned the darkness to ghastly vivid light, the 
fierce red and orange of bursting bombs and 
grenades threw splashes of angry colour on the 
glistening wet parapets, the flat khaki caps of 
the British, the dark overcoats of the Germans 
struggling and hacking in the barb-wires. The 
eye was confused with the medley of leaping 
lights and shadows ; the ear was dazed with the 
clamour and uproar of cracking rifles, scream- 
ing bullets, and shattering bombs, the oaths 
and yells, the shouted orders, the groans and 
outcries of the wounded. Then from overhead 
came a savage rush and shriek, a flash of light 
that showed vivid even amidst the confusion 
of light, a harder, more vicious crash than all 
the other crashing reports, and the shrapnel 
ripped down along the line of the German 
trench that erupted struggling, hurrying knots 
of men. 

A call from the trench telephone, or the 



4 BETWEEN THE LINES 

sound of the burst of bomb and rifle fire, had 
brought the gunners on the jump for their 
loaded pieces, and once more the guns were 
taking a hand. Shell after shell roared up 
overhead and lashed the ground with shrapnel, 
and for a moment the attack flinched and hung 
back and swayed uncertainly under the cruel 
hail. For a moment only, and then it surged 
on again, seethed and eddied in agitated whirl- 
pools amongst the stakes and strands of the 
torturing wires, came on again, and with a roar 
of hate and frenzied triumph leaped at the low 
parapet. The parapet flamed and roared again 
in gusts of rapid fire, and the front ranks of the 
attackers withered and went down in strug- 
gling heaps before it. But the ranks behind 
came on fiercely and poured in over the trench j 
the lights flickered and danced on plunging 
bayonets and polished butts ; the savage voices 
of the killing machines were drowned in the 
more savage clamour of the human fighter, and 
then . . . comparative silence fell on the 
trench. 

The attack had succeeded, the Germans were 
in, and, save for one little knot of men who 
had escaped at the last minute, the defenders 
were killed, wounded, or taken prisoners. The 
captured trench was shaped like the curve of 



THE ADVANCED TRENCHES 5 

a tall, thin capital D, a short communication 
trench leading in to either end from the main 
firing trench that formed the back of the D 
and a prolongation outwards from it. The 
curve was in German hands, but no sooner was 
this certain than the main trench sprang to 
angry life. The Germans in the captured curve 
worked in a desperation of haste, pulling sand- 
bags from what had been the face of the trench 
and heaving them into place to make a breast- 
work on the new front, while reinforcements 
rushed across from the German side and 
opened fire at the main British trench a score 
of yards away. 

Then, before the gasping takers of the trench 
could clear the dead and wounded from under 
their feet, before they could refill their emptied 
magazines, or settle themselves to new foot- 
holds and elbow-rests, the British counter- 
attack was launched. It was ushered in by a 
shattering burst of shrapnel. The word had 
passed to the gunners, careful and minute ad- 
justments had been made, the muzzles had 
swung round a fraction, and then, suddenly and 
quick as the men could fling in a round, slam 
the breech and pull the firing lever, shell after 
shell had leapt roaring on their way to sweep 
the trench that had been British, but now was 



6 BETWEEN THE LINES 

enemy. For ten or fifteen seconds the shrap- 
nel hailed fiercely on the cowering trench ; then, 
at another word down the telephone, the fire 
shnt off abruptly, to re-open almost immedi- 
ately further forward over the main German 
trenches. 

From the main British trench an officer 
leaped, another and another heaved themselves 
over the parapet, and in an instant the long, 
level edge of the trench was crowded with 
scrambling, struggling men. "With a hoarse 
yell they flung themselves forward, and the lost 
trench spouted a whirlwind of fire and lead to 
meet their rush. But the German defenders 
had no fair chance of resistance. Their new 
parapet was not half formed and offered no 
protection to the stream of bullets that sleeted 
in on them from rifles and maxims on their 
flanks. The charging British infantry carried 
hand grenades and bombs and flung them ahead 
of them as they ran, and, finally, there was no 
thicket of barb-wire to check the swing and 
impetus of the rush. The trench was reached, 
and again the clamour of voices raised in fear 
and pain, the hoarse rancour of hate, the shrill 
agony of death, rose high on the sounds of 
battle. The rush swept up on the trench, en- 
gulfed it as a wave engulfs the cleft on a rock 



THE ADVANCED TRENCHES 7 

beach, boiled and eddied about it, and then . . . 
and then . . . swept roaring over it, and on. 
The counter-attack had succeeded, and the vic- 
tors were pushing their advantage home in an 
attack on the main German trench. The rem- 
nants of the German defenders were swept 
back, fighting hopelessly but none the less 
fiercely. Supports poured out to their assist- 
ance, and for a full five minutes the fight raged 
and swayed in the open between the trenches 
and among the wire entanglements. The men 
who fell were trampled, squirming, underfoot 
in the bloody mire and mud; the fighters 
stabbed and hacked and struck at short arm- 
length, fell even to using fists and fingers when 
the press was too close for weapon play and 
swing. 

But the attack died out at last without the 
German entanglements being passed or their 
earthwork being reached. Here and there an 
odd man had scrambled and torn a way through 
the wire, only to fall on or before the parapet. 
Others hung limp or writhing feebly to free 
themselves from the clutching hooks of the 
wire. Both sides withdrew, panting and nurs- 
ing their dripping wounds, to the shelter of 
their trenches, and both left their dead 
sprawled in the trampled ooze or stayed to 



8 BETWEEN THE LINES 

help their wounded crawling painfully back to 
cover. Immediately the British set about re- 
building their shattered trench and parapet; 
but before they had well begun the spades had 
to be flung down again and the rifle snatched to 
repel another fierce assault. This time a storm 
of bombs, hand grenades, rifle grenades, and 
every other fiendish device of high-explosives, 
preceded the attack. The trench was racked 
and rent and torn, sections were solidly 
blown in, and other sections were flung out bod- 
ily in yawning crevasses and craters. From 
end to end the line was wrapped in billowing 
clouds of reeking smoke, and starred with 
bursts of fire. The defenders flattened them- 
selves close against the forward parapet that 
shook and trembled beneath them like a live 
thing under the rending blasts. The rifles still 
cracked up and down the line ; but, in the main, 
the soaking, clay-smeared men held still and 
hung on, grimly waiting and saving their full 
magazines for the rush they knew would fol- 
low. It came at last, and the men breathed a 
sigh of relief at the escape it meant from the 
rain of high explosives. It was their turn now, 
and the roar of their rifle-fire rang out and 
the bomb-throwers raised themselves to hurl 
their carefully-saved missiles on the advancing 



THE ADVANCED TRENCHES 9 

mass. The mass reeled and split and melted 
under the fire, but fresh troops were behind and 
pushing it on, and once more it flooded in on 
the trench. . . . 

Again the British trench had become Ger- 
man, although here and there throughout its 
length knots of men still fought on, unheeding 
how the fight had gone elsewhere in the line, 
and intent solely on their own little circle of 
slaughter. 

But this time the German success was hardly 
made before it was blotted out. The British 
supports had been pushed up to the disputed 
point, and as the remnants of the last defend- 
ers straggled back they met the fierce rush of 
the new and fresh force. 

This time it was quicker work. The trench 
by now was shattered and wrecked out of all 
real semblance to a defensive work. The edge 
of the new attack swirled up to it, lipped over 
and fell bodily into it. For a bare minute the 
defence fought, but it was overborne and wiped 
out in that time. The British flung in on top 
of the defenders like terriers into a rat-pit, and 
the fighters snarled and worried and scuffled 
and clutched and tore at each other more like 
savage brutes than men. The defence was not 
broken or driven out — it was killed out; and 



10 BETWEEN THE LINES 

lunging bayonet or smashing butt caught and 
finished the few that tried to struggle and claw 
a way out up the slippery trench- sides. Hard 
on the heels of the victorious attackers came a 
swarm of men running and staggering to the 
trench with filled sandbags over their shoul- 
ders. As the front of the attack passed on 
over the wrecked trench and pressed the Ger- 
mans back across the open, the sandbags were 
flung down and heaped scientifically in the 
criss-cross of a fresh breastwork. Other men, 
laden with coils of wire and stakes and ham- 
mers, ran out in front and fell to work erect- 
ing a fresh entanglement. In five minutes or 
ten — for minutes are hard to count and tally 
at such a time and in such work — the new de- 
fence was complete, and the fighters in the 
open ran back and leapt over into cover. 

Once more a steady crackle of rifle-fire ran 
quivering up and down the line, and from their 
own trenches the Germans could see, in the 
light of the flares, a new breastwork facing 
them, a new entanglement waiting to trap them, 
a steady stream of fire spitting and sparkling 
along the line. They could see, too, the heaped 
dead between the lines, and in their own 
thinned ranks make some reckoning of the cost 
of their attempt. 



THE ADVANCED TRENCHES 11 

The attempt was over. There were a few 
score dead lying in ones and twos and little 
clumped heaps in the black mud; the disputed 
trench was a reeking shambles of dead and 
wounded ; the turn of the stretcher-bearers and 
the Eed Cross workers had come. There would 
be another column to add to the Casualty Lists 
presently, and another bundle of telegrams to 
be despatched to the "Next of Kin." 

And to-morrow the official despatch would 
mention the matter coldly and tersely; and the 
papers would repeat it; and a million eyes 
would read with little understanding . . . 
"changed hands several times, finally remain- 
ing in our possession." 



SHELLS 

11 . . . to the right a violent artillery bom- 
bardment has been in progress." — Actual 
Extract from Official Despatch. 

No. 2 Platoon of the Royal Blanks was cook- 
ing its breakfast with considerable difficulty 
and an astonishing amount of cheerfulness 
when the first shell fell in front of their firing 
trench. It had rained most of the night, as 
indeed it had rained most of the past week or 
the past month. All night long the men had 
stood on the firing step of the trench, chilled 
and miserable in their sodden clothing, and 
sunk in soft sticky mud over the ankles. All 
night long they had peeped over the parapet, 
or fired through the loopholes at the German 
trench a hundred yards off. And all night long 
they had been galled and stung by that ' ' desul- 
tory rifle fire" that the despatches mention so 
casually and so often, and that requires to be 
endured throughout a dragging day and night 
before its ugliness and unpleasantness can be 
realised. 

12 



SHELLS 12 

No. 2 Platoon had two casualties for the 
night — a corporal who had paused too long in 
looking over the parapet while a star-shell 
flared, and "caught it" neatly through the 
forehead, and a private who, in the act of firing 
through a loophole, had been hit by a bullet 
which glanced off his rifle barrel and completed 
its resulting ricochet in the private's eyes and 
head. There were other casualties further 
along the trench, but outside the immediate 
ken of No. 2 Platoon, until they were assisted 
or carried past on their way to the ambu- 
lance. 

Just after daybreak the desultory fire and 
the rain together had almost ceased, and No. 2 
Platoon set about trying to coax cooking fires 
out of damp twigs and fragments of biscuit 
boxes which had been carefully treasured and 
protected in comparative dryness inside the 
men's jackets. The breakfast rations consisted 
of Army bread — heavy lumps of a doughy 
elasticity one would think only within the range 
of badness of a comic paper's "Mrs. Newly- 
wed" — flint-hard biscuits, cheese, and tea. 

"The only complaint against the rations 
bein' too much plum jam," said a clay-smeared 
private, quoting from a much-derided "Eye- 
witness" report as he dug out a solid streak 



14 BETWEEN THE LINES 

of uncooked dough from the centre of his half- 
loaf and dropped it in the brazier. 

Then the first shell landed. It fell some 
yards outside the parapet, and a column of 
sooty black smoke shot up and hung heavily in 
the damp air. No. 2 Platoon treated it lightly. 

1 'Good mornin'," said one man cheerfully, 
nodding towards the black cloud. "An' we 
'ave not used Pears' soap." 

" Bless me if it ain't our old friend the Coal 
Box," said another. "We 'aven't met one of 
'is sort for weeks back. ' ' 

"An' here's 'is pal Whistling Willie," said 
a third, and they sat listening to the rise-and- 
fall whistling s-s-sh-s-s-sh of a high-angle gun's 
shell. As the whistle rose to a shriek, the 
group of men half made a move to duck, but 
they were too late, and the shell burst with a 
thunderous bang just short of the front para- 
pet. Mud and lumps of earth splashed and 
rattled down into the trench, and fragments of 
iron hurtled singing overhead. 

The men cursed angrily. The brazier had 
been knocked over by a huge clod, half -boiling 
water was spilt, and, worst of all, the precious 
dry wood had fallen in the mud and water of 
the trench bottom. But the men soon had other 
things than a lost breakfast to think of. A 



SHELLS 15 

shrapnel crashed overhead and a little to the 
right, and a sharp scream that died down into 
deep groans told of the first casualty. Another 
shell, and then another, roared up and smashed 
into the soft ground behind the trench, hurting 
no one, but driving the whole line to crouch 
low in the narrow pit. 

"Get down and lie close everyone," shouted 
the young officer of No. 2 Platoon, but the 
"crump-crump-crump" of another group of 
falling shells spoke sterner and more impera- 
tive orders than his. For half an hour the big 
shells fell with systematic and regular preci- 
sion along the line of the front trench, behind it 
on the bare ground, and further back towards 
the supports' trench. The shooting was good, 
but so were the trenches — deep and narrow, 
and steep-sided, with dug-outs scooped under 
the bank and strong traverses localising the 
effect of any shell that fell exactly on the 
trench. There were few casualties, and the 
Royal Blanks were beginning to congratulate 
themselves on getting off so lightly as the fire 
slackened and almost died away. 

"With the rest of the line No. 2 Platoon was 
painfully moving from its cramped position 
and trying to stamp and shake the circulation 
back into its stiffened limbs, when there came 



16 BETWEEN THE LINES 

a sudden series of swishing rushes and sharp 
vicious cracks overhead, and ripping thuds of 
shrapnel across and across the trench. The 
burst of fire from the light guns was excellently 
timed. Their high velocity and flat trajectory 
landed the shells on their mark without any of 
the whistling rush of approach that marked the 
bigger shells and gave time to duck into any 
available cover. The one gust of light shells 
caught a full dozen men — as many as the half- 
hour's work of the big guns. 

Then the heavies opened again as accurately 
as before and twice as fast. The trench began 
to yawn in wide holes, and its sides to crumble 
and collapse. No. 2 Platoon occupied a portion 
of the trench that ran out in a blunted angle, 
and it caught the worst of the fire. One shell 
falling just short of the front parapet dug a 
yawning hole and drove in the forward wall of 
the trench in a tumbled slide of mud and earth. 
A dug-out and the two men occupying it were 
completely buried, and the young officer scur- 
ried and pushed along to the place shouting 
for spades. A party fell to work with frantic 
haste; but all their energy was wasted. The 
occupants of the buried dugout were dead 
when at last the spades found them . . . and 
broken finger-nails and bleeding finger-tips 



SHELLS 17 

told a grisly tale of the last desperate struggle 
for escape and for the breath of life. The 
officer covered the one convulsed face and start- 
ing eyes with his handkerchief, and a private 
placed a muddy cap over the other. 

"Get back to your places and get down," 
said the officer quietly, and the men crawled 
back and crouched low again. For a full hour 
the line lay under the flail of the big shells 
that roared and shrieked overhead and thun- 
dered crashing along the trenches. For a full 
hour the men barely moved, except to shift 
along from a spot where the shaken and crum- 
bling parapet gave insufficient cover from the 
hailing shrapnel that poured down at intervals, 
and from the bullets that swept in and smacked 
venomously into the back of the trench through 
the shell-rifts in the parapet. 

A senior officer made his way slowly along 
the sodden and quaking trench. He halted be- 
side the young officer and spoke to him a few 
minutes, asking what the casualties were and 
hoping vaguely "they would ease off pres- 
ently." 

"Can't our own guns do anything?" asked 
the youngster; "or won't they let us get out 
and have a go at them?" 

The senior nodded towards the bare stretch 



18 BETWEEN THE LINES 

of muddy plough before their trench, and the 
tangle of barbed wire beyond. 

"How many men d'you suppose would get 
there?" he asked. 

"Some would," said the youngster eagerly, 
"and anything would be better than sticking 
here and getting pounded to pieces." 

"We'll see," said the major moving off. 
' i They may ask us to try it presently. And if 
not we '11 pull through, I daresay. See that the 
men keep down, and keep down yourself, Grant. 
Watch out for a rush through. This may be 
a preparation for something of the sort. ' ' 

He moved along, and the lad flattened himself 
again against the side of the wet trench. 

A word from a man near him turned him 
round. "... a 'tillery Observin' Officer corn- 
in'. P'raps our guns are goin' for 'em at 
last." 

The gunner officer stumbled along the trench 
towards them. Behind him came his signaller, 
a coil of wire and a portable telephone in a 
leather case slung over his shoulder. No. 2 
Platoon watched their approach with eager an- 
ticipation, and strained ears and attention to 
catch the conversation that passed between 
their officer and the artilleryman. And a thrill 
of disappointment pulsed down the line at the 



SHELLS 19 

gunner's answer to the first question put to 
him. "No," he said, "I have orders not to fire 
unless they come out of the trenches to attack. 
We'll give 'em gyp if they try it. My guns 
are laid on their front trench and I can sweep 
the whole of this front with shrapnel. ' ' 

"But why not shut up their guns and put 
a stop to this?" asked the officer, and his pla- 
toon fervently echoed the question in their 
hearts. 

"Not my pidgin," said the gunner, cau- 
tiously peering through the field-glasses he lev- 
elled through a convenient loophole. "That's 
the Heavies' job. I'm Field, and my guns are 
too light to say much to these fellows. Look 
out!" and he stooped low in the trench as the 
rising rush of sound told of a shell coming 
down near them. 

"That's about an eight-inch," he said, after 
the shell had fallen with a crash behind them, 
a spout of earth and mud leaping up and spat- 
tering down over them and fragments singing 
and whizzing overhead. "Just tap in on the 
wire, Jackson, and raise the Battery." 

The telephonist opened his case and lifted 
out his instrument, groped along the trench 
wall a few yards and found his wire, joined 
up to his instruments, dashed off a series of 



20 BETWEEN THE LINES 

dots and dashes on the "buzzer," and spoke 
into his mouthpiece. No. 2 Platoon watched 
in fascinated silence and again gave all their 
attention to listening as the Artillery officer 
took the receiver. 

"... That you, Major? . . . Yes, this is 
Arbuthnot. ... In the forward firing trench. 
. . . Yes, pretty lively . . . big stuff they're 
flinging mostly, and some twelve-pounder 
shrapnel. . . . No, no signs of a move in their 
trenches. . . . All right, sir, I'll take care. I 
can't see very well from here, so I'm going to 
move along a bit. . . . Very well, sir, I'll tap 
in again higher up. . . . Good-bye." He 
handed back the instrument to the telephonist. 
"Pack up again," he said, "and come along." 

When he had gone No. 2 Platoon turned 
eagerly on the telephonist, and he ran a gaunt- 
let of anxious questions as he followed the For- 
ward Officer. Nine out of ten of the questions 
were to the same purpose, and the gunner an- 
swered them with some sharpness. He turned 
angrily at last on one man who put the query 
in broad Scots accent. 

"No," he said tartly, "we ain't tryin' to 
silence their guns. An' if you partickler wants 
to know why we ain't — well, p'raps them Glas- 
gow townies o' yours can tell you." 



SHELLS 21 

He went on and No. 2 Platoon sank to grim 
silence. The meaning of the gunner's words 
were plain enough to all, for had not the pa- 
pers spoken for weeks back of the Clyde strikes 
and the shortage of munitions? And the 
thoughts of all were pithily put in the one sen- 
tence by a private of No. 2 Platoon. 

"I'd stop cheerful in this blanky 'ell for a 
week," he said slowly, "if so be I 'ad them 
strikers 'ere alongside me gettin' the same 
dose." 

All this time there had been a constant al- 
though not a heavy rifle fire on the trenches. 
It had not done much damage, because the 
Eoyal Blanks were exposing themselves as lit- 
tle as possible and keeping low down in their 
narrow trenches. But now the German rifles 
began to speak faster, and the fire rose to a 
dull roar. The machine-guns joined in, their 
sharp rat-tat-tat sounding hard and distinct 
above the rifles. As the volume of rifle fire 
increased, so, for a minute, did the shell fire, 
until the whole line of the Royal Blanks' 
trenches was vibrating to the crash of the shells 
and humming with rifle bullets which whizzed 
overhead or smacked with loud whipcrack re- 
ports into the parapet. 

The officer of No. 2 Platoon hitched himself 



22 BETWEEN THE LINES 

higher on the parapet and hoisted a periscope 
over it. Almost instantly a bullet struck it, 
shattering the glass to fragments. He lowered 
it and hastily fitted a new glass, pausing every 
few moments to bob his head up over the para- 
pet and glance hastily across at the German 
trench. A second time he raised his instru- 
ment to position and in less than a minute it 
was shot away for a second time. 

The Artillery officer came hurrying and 
stumbling back along the trench, his telephon- 
ist labouring behind him. They stopped at the 
place where they had tapped in before and the 
telephonist busied himself connecting up his 
instrument. The Artillery officer flung himself 
down beside the Platoon commander. "My 
confounded wire cut again, " he panted, "just 
when I want it too. Sounds as if they meant a 
rush, eh?" The infantryman nodded. "Will 
they stop shelling before they rush?" he 
shouted. 

"Not till their men are well out in front. 
Their guns can keep going over their heads 
for a bit. Are you through, Jackson? Tell 
the Battery to 'eyes front.' It looks like an 
attack. ' ' 

The telephonist repeated the message, lis- 
tened a moment and commenced, "The Major 



SHELLS 23 

says, sir " when his officer interrupted 

sharply, ''three rounds gun-fire — quick." 

" Three rounds gun-fire — quick, sir," bel- 
lowed the telephonist into his mouthpiece. 

"Here they come, lads. Let 'em have it," 
yelled the Platoon commander, and commenced 
himself to fire through a loophole. 

At the same moment there came from the 
rear the quick thudding reports of the British 
guns, the rush of their shells overhead, and 
the sharp crash of their shells over the Ger- 
man parapets. 

"All fired, sir," called the telephonist. 

"Battery fire one second," the Observing 
Officer shouted without turning his head from 
his watch over the parapet. 

"Number one fired — two fired — three fired," 
the signaller called rapidly, and the Observing 
Officer watched narrowly the white cotton-wool 
clouds of the bursting shrapnel of his guns. 

"Number three, ten minutes more right — all 
guns, drop twenty-five — repeat," he ordered, 
and in swift obedience the guns began to drop 
their shrapnel showers, sweeping along the 
ground in front of the German trench. 

But the expected rush of Germans hung fire. 
A line of bobbing heads and shoulders had 
showed above their parapet and only a few 



24 BETWEEN THE LINES 

scattered groups had clambered over its top. 

"They're beat," shouted the infantry of- 
ficer, exultingly. "They're dodging back. 
Give it to 'em boys — give it — ow!" He broke 
off and ducked down with a hand clapped to 
his cheek where a bullet had scored its way. 

1 ' Get down ! get down ! Make your men get 
down," said the gunner officer rapidly. "It's 
all . . ." 

Again there came the swishing rush of the 
light shells, a series of quick-following bangs, 
and a hail of shrapnel tearing across the 
trench, before the men had time to duck. 

"All a false alarm — just a dodge to get your 
men's heads up within reach of their Fizz- 
Bangs' shrapnel," said the artilleryman, and 
called to the signaller. ' ' All guns raise twenty- 
five. Section fire five seconds. . . . Hullo — 
hit?" he continued to the Platoon officer, as 
he noticed him wiping a smear of blood from 
his cheek. 

"Just a nice little scratch," said the lad, 
grinning. ' ' Enough to let me swank about be- 
ing wounded and show off a pretty scar to my 
best girl when the war's over." 

"Afraid that last shrapnel burst gave some 
of your fellows more 'n a pretty scar, ' ' said the 
gunner. "But I suppose I'd better slow my 



SHELLS 25 

guns up again. . . . Jackson, tell them the at- 
tack's evidently stopped — section fire ten sec- 
onds." 

" Can't you keep on belting 'em for a bit?" 
asked the Platoon officer. "Might make 'em 
ease up on us." 

The gunner shook his head regretfully. 

"I'd ask nothing better," he said. "I could 
just give those trenches beans. But our or- 
ders are strict, and we daren't waste a round 
on anything but an attack. I'll bet that's my 
Major wanting to know if he can't slack off a 
bit more," he continued, as the signaller called 
something about "Wanted to speak here, 
sir. ' ' 

He went to the instrument and held a short 
conversation. "Told you so," he said, when 
he returned to the infantry officer. ' ' No attack 
— no shells. We're stopping again." 

"Doesn't seem to be too much stop about 
the Germs," grumbled the infantryman, as 
another series of crackling shells shook the 
ground close behind them. He moved down the 
line speaking a few words here and there to 
the crouching men of his platoon. 

"This is getting serious," he said when he 
came back to his place. "There's more than 
the half of my lot hit, and the most of them 



26 BETWEEN THE LINES 

pretty badly. These shrapnel bullets and shell 
splinters make a shocking mess of a wound, 
y'know." 

"Yes," said the gunner grimly, "I know." 

"A perfectly brutal mess," the subaltern re- 
peated. "A bullet now is more or less decent, 
but those shells of theirs, they don't give a 
man a chance to pull through." 

"Ours are as bad, if that's any satisfaction 
to you," said the gunner. 

"I s'pose so," agreed the subaltern. 
"Ghastly sort of game altogether, isn't it? 
Those poor fellows of mine now — the killed, 
I mean. Think of their fathers and mothers 
and wives or sweethearts " 

"I'd rather not," said the gunner. "And I 
shouldn't advise you to. Better not to think of 
these things." 

"I wish they'd come again," said the Pla- 
toon commander. "It would stop the shells 
for a bit perhaps. They're getting on my 
nerves. One's so helpless against them, stick- 
ing here waiting to know where the next will 
drop. And they don't even give a fellow the 
ordinary four to one chance of a casualty being 
a wound only. They make such a cruel messy 
smash of a fellow. . . . Are you going?" 

1 ' Must find that break in my wire, ' ' said the 



SHELLS 27 

gunner, and presently he and the telephonist 
ploughed off along the trench. 

The bombardment continued with varying 
intensity throughout the day. There was no 
grand finale, no spectacular rush or charge, no 
crashing assault, no heroic hand-to-hand com- 
bats — no anything but the long-drawn agony 
of lying still and being hammered by the crash- 
ing shells. This was no ' ' artillery preparation 
for the assault," although the Koyal Blanks 
did not know that and so dare not stir from 
the danger zone of the forward trench. They 
were not even to have the satisfaction of giv- 
ing back some of the punishment they had en- 
dured, or the glory — a glory carefully con- 
cealed from their friends at home, and mostly 
lost by the disguising or veiling of their iden- 
tity in the newspapers, but still a glory — of 
taking a trench or making a successful attack 
or counter-attack. It was merely another 
"heavy artillery bombardment," lived through 
and endured all unknown, as so many have 
been endured. 

The Koyal Blanks were relieved at nightfall 
when the fire had died down. The Artillery 
Observing Officer was just outside the com- 
munication trench at the relief hour and saw 
the casualties being helped or carried out. A 



28 BETWEEN THE LINES 

stretcher passed and the figure on it had a 
muddy and dark-stained blanket spread over, 
and an officer's cap and binoculars on top. 

"An officer ?" asked the gunner. "Who 
is it?" 

"Mr. Grant, sir," said one of the stretcher- 
bearers dully. "No. 2 Platoon." 

The gunner noted the empty sag of the 
blanket where the head and shoulders should 
have been outlined and checked the half -formed 
question of "Badly hit?" to "How was 
it?" 

' ' Shell, sir. A Fizz-Bang hit the parapet just 
where 'e was lyin\ Caught 'im fair." 

The bearers moved on, leaving the gunner 
groping in his memory for a sentence in the 
youngster's last talk he had heard. "Ghastly 
business . . . cruel messy smash." 

"Beg pardon, sir?" said the telephonist. 

The Forward Officer made no answer but 
continued to stare after the disappearing 
stretcher-bearers. The signaller shuffled his 
feet in the mud and hitched up the strap of the 
instrument on his shoulder. 

"I suppose it's all over now, sir," he said. 

"Yes, all over — except for his father, or 
mother, or sweetheart," said the officer ab- 
sently. 



SHELLS 29 

The signaller stared. "I meant the shellin', 
sir." 

"Oh — ah, yes; the shelling, Jackson. Yes, 
I daresay that's over for to-night, since they 
seem to have stopped now." 

"P'raps we might see about some food, sir," 
said the signaller. 

"Food — to be sure," said the officer briskly. 
"Eat, drink, and be merry, Jackson, for — I'm 
hungry, too, now I think of it. And, oh Lord, 
I'm tired." 

No. 2 Platoon were tired too, as they filed 
wearily out by the communication trench, tired 
and worn out mentally and physically — and yet 
not too tired or too broken for a light word or a 
jest. From the darkness behind them a Ger- 
man flare soared up and burst, throwing up 
bushes and shattered buildings, sandbag para- 
pets, broken tree-stumps, sticks and stones in 
luminous-edged silhouette. A machine-gun 
burst into a stutter of fire, the reports sound- 
ing faint at first and louder and louder as the 
muzzle swept round in its arc. "Ssh-sh-sh-sh," 
the bullets swept overhead, and No. 2 Platoon 
halted and crouched low in the shallow com- 
munication trench. 

"Oh, shut it, blast ye," growled one of the 



30 BETWEEN THE LINES 

men disgustedly. "Ain't we 'ad enough for 
one day?" 

"It's only 'im singin' 'is little evenin' hymn 
as usual," said another. 

"Just sayin' 'is good-bye an' sendin' a few 
partin' sooveniers;" and another sang, "Say 
aw rev- wore, but not good-bye." 

1 ' Stop that howling there, ' ' a sergeant called 
down the line, "and stop smoking those ciga- 
rettes and talking." 

"Certainly, sergeant," a voice came back. 
1 * An ' please sergeant, will you allow us to keep 
on breathin '? " 

The light died, and the line rose and moved 
on, squelching softly in the mud. A man 
clapped a hand to his pocket, half halted and 
exclaimed in annoyance. "Blest if I 'aven't 
left my mouth-organ back there," he said. 
"Hutt!" said his next file. "Be glad ye've a 
mouth left, or a head to have a mouth. It might 
be worse, an' ye might be left back there yer- 
self decoratin' about ten square yards of 
trench. ' ' 

"Tut-tut- tut- tut" went the maxim behind 
them again. 

"Tutt-tutt yourself, you stammer-an'-spit 
blighter," said the disconsolate mouth-organ 
loser, and ' ' D 'you think we can chance a smoke 



SHELLS 31 

yet?" as the platoon moved out on the road and 
behind the shelter of some ruined housewalls. 
Platoon by platoon the company filed out 
and formed up roughly behind the houses. The 
order to move came at last and the ranked 
fours swung off, tramping slowly and stolidly 
in silence until someone struck up a song — 

"Crump, crump, crump, says the big bustin' shells " 



A chorus of protest and a "Give the shells 
a rest" stopped the song on the first line, and 
it was to the old regimental tune, the canteen 
and sing-song favourite, "The Sergeant's Ee- 
turn, ' ' that the Royal Blanks settled itself into 
its pack shoulder-straps and tramped on. 

I'm the same ol' feller that you always used to know — 

Oh ! Oh ! you know you used to know — 
An' it's years since we parted way down on Plymouth Hoe — 

Oh ! Oh ! So many years ago. 
I've roamed around the world, but I've come back to you, 
For my 'eart 'as never altered, my 'eart is ever true. 
(Prolonged and noisy imitation of a kiss.) 
Ain't that got the taste you always used to know? 

The colonel was talking to the adjutant in 
the road as the companies moved past, and he 
noted with some concern the ragged ranks and 
listless movement of the first lot to pass. 

"They're looking badly tucked up," he said. 



32 BETWEEN THE LINES 

''They've had a cruel day," said the adju- 
tant. 

1 1 Yes, the worst kind, ' ' agreed the O.C. * ' And 
I doubt if they can stand that sort of thing so 
well now. The old regiment is not what it used 
to be. We're so filled up with recruits now — 
youngsters too. . . . Here's B company — about 
the rawest of the lot and caught the worst of 
it to-day. How d 'you think they stand it ! " 

But it was B company that answered the 
question for itself and the old regiment, singing 
the answer softly to itself and the O.C. as it 
trudged past — 

I'm the same ol' feller that you always used to know — 
Oh ! Oh ! you know you used to know. . . . 

"Gad, Malcolm," said the O.C. straighten- 
ing his own shoulders, "they'll do, they'll do." 

. . . My 'eart 'as never altered, my 'eart is ever true, 

the remnant of No. 2 Platoon sang past him. 

"They haven't shaken us yet," said the 
O.C. proudly. 

"Tutt, tutt!" grumbled the maxim faintly. 
"Tutt, tutt!" 



THE MINE 

". . . a mine was successfully exploded un- 
der a section of the enemy's trench. . . ." — 
Actual Extkact from an Official. Despatch. 

Work on the sap-head had been commenced 
on what the Captain of the Sappers called "a 
beautiful night, ' ' and what anyone else outside 
a lunatic asylum would have described with the 
strongest adjectives available in exactly the 
opposite sense. A piercing wind was blowing 
in gusts of driving sleet and rain, it was pitch 
dark — "black as the inside of a cow," as the 
Corporal put it — and it was bitterly cold. But, 
since all these conditions are exactly those 
most calculated to make difficult the work of 
an enemy's sentries and look-outs, and the first 
work of sinking a shaft is one which it is highly 
desirable should be unobserved by an enemy, 
the Sapper Captain's satisfaction may be un- 
derstood. 

The sap-head was situated amongst the 
ruins of a cottage a few yards behind the for- 
ward firing trench, and by the time a wet day- 
light had dawned the Sappers had dug them- 

33 



34 BETWEEN THE LINES 

selves well underground, had securely planked 
up the walls of the shaft, and had cut a con- 
necting gallery from the ruins to the communi- 
cation trench. All this meant that their work 
was fairly free from observation, and the 
workers reasonably safe from bombs and bul- 
lets, so that the officer in charge had good cause 
for the satisfaction with which he made his first 
report. 

His first part of the work had been a matter 
of plans and maps, of compass and level, of 
observing the ground — incidentally dodging the 
bullets of the German snipers who caught 
glimpses of his crawling form — by day, and of 
intricate and exact figuring and calculating by 
night, in the grimy cellar of another ruined 
house by the light of a candle, stuck in an 
empty bottle. 

Thereafter he spent all his waking hours 
(and many of his sleeping ones as well) in a 
thick suit of clayey mud; he lived like a mole 
in his mine gallery or his underground cellar, 
saw the light only when he emerged to pass 
from his work to his sleep or meals, and back 
to his work, and generally gave himself, his 
whole body and brain and being, to the cor- 
rect driving of a shallow burrow straight to 
the selected point under the enemy trench a 



THE MINE 35 

hundred and odd yards away. He was a young- 
ish man, and this was the first job of any im- 
portance that had been wholly and solely en- 
trusted to him. It was not only his anxiety 
to make a creditable showing, but he was keen 
on the work for the work's own sake, and he 
revelled in the creative sense of the true artist. 
The mine was his. He had first suggested it, 
he had surveyed it, and plotted it, and meas- 
ured and planned and worked it out on paper; 
and now, when it came to the actual pick-and- 
shovel work, he supervised and, directed and 
watched each hour of work, and each yard of 
progress. 

It was tricky work, too, and troublesome. 
At first the ground was good stiff clay that the 
spades bit out in clean mouthfuls, and that left 
a fair firm wall behind. But that streak ran out 
in the second day's working, and the mine bur- 
rowed into some horrible soft crumbly soil that 
had to be held up and back by roof and wall 
of planking. The Subaltern took a party him- 
self and looted the wrecks of houses — there 
was no lack of these in the village just behind 
the lines — of roof-beams and flooring, and 
measured and marked them for sawing into 
lengths, and would have taken a saw with 
pleasure himself. 



36 BETWEEN THE LINES 

Then he dived cheerfully into the oozing wet 
burrow and superintended the shoring up, and 
re- started the men to digging, and emerged a 
moment to see more planking passed down. He 
came in fact dangerously near to making a 
nuisance of himself, and some of his men who 
had been sapping and mining for wet and 
weary months past were inclined to resent 
quite so much fussing round and superintend- 
ence. But the Corporal put that right. He 
was an elderly man with a nasty turn of tem- 
per that had got him into almost as many 
troubles in his service as his knowledge, ex- 
perience, and aptitude for hard work and re- 
sponsibility had got him out of. 

''Leave the lad be," he had said when some 
of the party had passed grumbling remarks 
about "too bloomin' much fuss an' feathers 
over a straight simple bloomin' job." The 
Corporal had promptly squashed that opinion. 
"Leave the lad be," he said. "He's young to 
the job, mebbe, but he's not such a simple fool 
as some that take this for a simple job. It's 
not goin' to be all that simple, as you'll find 
before you're done." 

He was right, too. The crumbling soil was 
one little difficulty promptly and easily met. 
The next was more troublesome. The soil 



THE MINE 37 

grew wetter and more wet until at last the men 
were working ankle deep in water. The fur- 
ther the mine went the wetter it became. The 
men worked on, taking their turn at the nar- 
row face, shovelling out the wet muck and 
dragging it back to the shaft and up and out 
and away by the communication trench. They 
squeezed aside in silence when the Subaltern 
pushed in to inspect the working, and waited 
with side winks to one another to see what he 
would do to overcome the water difficulty. 
"Pumps" would of course have been the sim- 
ple answer, but the men knew as well as the 
Subaltern knew that pumps were not to be had 
at that particular time and place for love or 
money, and that all the filling of all the "in- 
dents" in the E.E. would not produce one sin- 
gle efficient pump from store. 

The Subaltern did not trouble with indent 
forms or stores. He had had something of a 
fight to get a grudging permission for his mine, 
and he felt it in his bones that if he worried 
the big chiefs too much with requisitions he 
would be told to abandon the mine. He shut 
his teeth tight at the thought. It was his mine 
and he was going to see it through, if he had 
to bale the water out with a tea-cup. 

He made a quick cast through the shell- 



38 BETWEEN THE LINES 

wrecked village, drew blank, sat for fifteen min- 
utes on the curb of a rubble-choked well and 
thought hard, jumped up and called the Cor- 
poral to provide him with four men and some 
odd tools, and struck back across muddy and 
shell-cratered fields to the nearest farm. The 
farmer, who had remained in possession de- 
spite the daily proximity of bursting shells, a 
shrapnel-smashed tile roof, and a gaping hole 
where one house-corner should have been, made 
some objection to the commandeering of his 
old-fashioned farm pump. He was at first sup- 
ported in this by the officer in charge of the 
men billeted in the barn and sheds, but the Sap- 
per explained the urgency of his need and cun- 
ningly clinched the argument by reminding the 
Infantry officer that probably he and his men 
would soon be installed in the trenches from 
which the mine ran, and that he — the Sapper — 
although he was not supposed to mention it, 
might just hint that his mine was only hurry- 
ing to forestall an enemy mine which was 
judged to be approaching the trench the In- 
fantry officer would presently occupy. This 
last was a sheer invention of the moment, but 
it served excellently, and the Sapper and his 
party bore off their pump in triumph. It was 
later erected in the mine shaft, and the dif- 



THE MINE 39 

ficulty of providing sufficient piping to run 
from the pump to the waterlogged part of the 
mine was met by a midnight visit to the house 
where Headquarters abode and the wholesale 
removal of gutters and rain-pipes. As Head- 
quarters had its principal residence in a com- 
modious and cobwebby cellar, tjie absence of 
the gutters fortunately passed without remark, 
and the sentry who watched the looting and 
the sergeant to whom he reported it were quite 
satisfied by the presence of an Engineer officer 
and his calm assurance that it was "all right — 
orders — an Engineers' job." 

The pump did its work excellently, and a 
steady stream of muddy water gushed from its 
nozzle and flowed down the Headquarters gut- 
ter-pipes to a selected spot well behind the 
trenches. Unfortunately, the pump, being old- 
fashioned, was somewhat noisy, and all the 
packing and oiling and tinkering failed to si- 
lence its clank-clink, clank-clink, as its arm rose 
and fell. 

The nearest German trench caught the clank- 
clink, and by a simple process of deduction and 
elimination arrived at its meaning and its 
location. The pump and the pumpers led a 
troubled life after that. Snipers kept an un- 
steady but never silent series of bullets smack- 



40 BETWEEN THE LINES 

ing into the stones of the ruin, whistling over 
the communication trench, and ' ' whupp ' '-ing 
into the mud around both. A light gun took a 
hand and plumped a number of rounds each 
day into the crumbling walls and rubbish-heaps 
of stone and brick, and burst shrapnel all over 
the lot. The Sappers dodged the snipers by 
keeping tight and close to cover; they frus- 
trated the direct-hitting "Fizz-Bang" shells by 
a stout barricade of many thicknesses of sand- 
bags bolstering up the fragment of wall that 
hid their shaft and pump, and finally they 
erected a low roof over the works and sand- 
bagged that secure against the shrapnel. There 
were casualties of course, but these are always 
in the way of business with the Sappers and 
came as a matter of course. The Germans 
brought up a trench-mortar next and flung 
noisy and nerve-wrecking high-explosive bombs 
into and all round the ruin, bursting down 
all the remaining walls except the sandbagged 
one and scoring a few more casualties until the 
forward trench installed a trench-mortar of 
their own, and by a generous return of two 
bombs to the enemy's one put the German out 
of action. A big minnenwerfer came into play 
next, and because it could throw a murderous- 
sized bomb from far behind the German trench 



THE MINE 41 

it was too much for the British trench-mortar 
to tackle. This brought the gunners into the 
game, and the harassed infantry (who were 
coming to look on the Sapper Subaltern and 
his works as an unmitigated nuisance and a 
most undesirable acquaintance who drew more 
than a fair share of enemy fire on them) ap- 
pealed to the guns to rid them of their latest 
tormentor. An Artillery Observing Officer 
spent a perilous hour or two amongst the 
shrapnel and snipers' bullets on top of the 
sandbagged wall, until he had located the min- 
nenwerfer. Then about two minutes' tele- 
phoned talk to the Battery and ten minutes of 
spouting lyddite volcanoes finished the min- 
neniverfer trouble. But all this above-ground 
work was by way of an aside to the Sapper 
Subaltern. He was far too busy with his mine 
gallery to worry about the doings of gunners 
and bomb-throwers and infantry and such-like 
fellows. "When these people interfered with his 
work they were a nuisance of course, but he 
always managed to find a working party for 
the sandbagging protective work without stop- 
ping the job underground. 

So the gallery crept steadily on. They had 
to carry the tunnel rather close to the surface 
because at very little depth they struck more 



42 BETWEEN THE LINES 

water than any pumps, much less their single 
farmyard one, could cope with. The nearness 
to the surface made a fresh difficulty and 
necessitated the greatest care in working 
under the ground between the trenches, 
because here there were always deep shell- 
holes and craters to be avoided or floored 
with the planking that made the tunnel 
roof. So the gallery had to be driven 
carefully at a level below the danger of 
exposing it through a shell-hole and the depth 
at which the water lay. This meant a tunnel 
too low to stand or even kneel in with a straight 
back, and the men, kneeling in mud, crouched 
back on their heels and with rounded back and 
shoulders, struck their spades forward into the 
face and dragged the earth out spadeful by 
spadeful. Despite the numbing cold mud they 
knelt in, the men, stripped to shirts with rolled 
sleeves and open throats, streamed rivulets of 
sweat as they worked; for the air was close 
and thick and heavy, and the exertion in the 
cramped space was one long muscle-wracking 
strain. 

Once the roof and walls caved in, and three 
men were imprisoned. The collapse came dur- 
ing the night, fortunately, and, still more for- 
tunately behind the line and parapet of the for- 



THE MINE 43 

ward trench. The Subaltern flung himself and 
his men on the muddy wreckage in frantic haste 
to clear an opening and admit air to the im- 
prisoned men. It took time, a heart-breaking 
length of time ; and it was with a horrible dread 
in his heart that the Subaltern at last pushed 
in to the uncovered opening and crawled along 
the tunnel, flashing his electric torch before 
him. Half-way to the end he felt a draught 
of cold air, and, promptly extinguishing his 
lamp, saw a hole in the roof. His men were 
alive all right, and not only alive but keeping 
on hard at work at the end of the tunnel. When 
the collapse came they had gone back to where 
their roof lay across the bottom of a shell-hole, 
pulled a plank out, and — gone back to work. 

When the tunnel reached a point under the 
German parapet it was turned sharp to left and 
right, forming a capital T with the cross-piece 
running roughly along the line of trench and 
parapet. Here there was need of the utmost 
deliberation and caution. A pick could not be 
used, and even a spade had to be handled gen- 
tly, in case the sounds of working should reach 
the Germans overhead. In some places the 
Subaltern could actually hear the movements 
and footsteps of the enemy just above him. 

Twice the diggers disturbed a dead German, 



44 BETWEEN THE LINES 

buried evidently under the parapet. Once a 
significant crumbling of the earth and fall of a 
few heavy clods threatened a collapse where 
the gallery was under the edge of the trench. 
The spot was hastily but securely shored up 
with infinite caution and the least possible 
sound, and after that the Subaltern had the ex- 
plosive charges brought along and connected 
up in readiness. Then, if the roof collapsed 
or their work were discovered, the switch at 
the shaft could still be pressed, the wires would 
still carry the current, and the mine would be 
exploded. 

At last the Subaltern decided that everything 
was ready. He carefully placed his charges, 
connected up his wires again, cleared out his 
tools, and emerged to report "all ready." 

Now the "touching off" of a good-sized mine 
is not a matter to be done lightly or without 
due and weighty authority, and that because 
more is meant to result from it than the up- 
heaval of some square yards of earth and the 
destruction of so many yards of enemy trench. 
The mine itself, elaborate and labour-making 
as it may have been, is, after all, only a means 
to an end. That end may be the capture of a 
portion of the ruins of the trench, it may be 
the destruction of an especially strong and dan- 



THE MINE 45 

gerous "keep," a point of resistance or an 
angle for attack. It may even be a mine to 
destroy a mine which is known to be tunnelling 
into our own trenches, but in any case the ex- 
plosion is usually a signal for attack from one 
side or the other, and therefore requires all 
the usual elaborate arrangements of reinforce- 
ments and supports and so on. Therefore the 
Sapper Subaltern, when he had finished his 
work and made his report, had nothing to do 
but sit down and wait until other people's pre- 
parations were made, and he received orders to 
complete his work by utterly and devastatingly 
destroying it. The Subaltern found this wait 
about the most trying part of the whole affair, 
more especially since he had for a good many 
days and nights had so much to occupy his 
every moment. 

He received word at last of the day and hour 
appointed for the explosion, and had the 
honour of a visit of inspection from a very 
superior officer who pored long and painstak- 
ingly over the paper plans, put a great many 
questions, even went the length of walking 
down the communication trench and peering 
down the entrance shaft, and looking over the 
sandbagged wall through a periscope at the 
section of German trench marked down for de- 



46 BETWEEN THE LINES 

struction. Then he complimented the Subal- 
tern on his work, declined once again the offer 
of a muddy mackintosh and an invitation to 
crawl down the mine, and went off. The Sub- 
altern saw him off the premises, returned to 
the shaft and donned the mackintosh, and 
crawled off up his tunnel once more. 

Somehow, now that the whole thing was fin- 
ished and ready, he felt a pang of reluctance 
to destroy it and so fulfil its destiny. As he 
crawled along, he noted each little bit of shor- 
ing-up and supporting planks, each rise and 
fall in the floor, each twist and angle in the 
direction, and recalled the infinite labour of 
certain sections, his glows of satisfaction at 
the speed of progress at the easy bits, his im- 
patience at the slow and difficult portions. It 
seemed as if he had been building that tunnel 
for half a lifetime, had hardly ever done any- 
thing else but build it or think about building 
it. And now, to-morrow it was all to be de- 
stroyed. He recalled with a thrill of boyish 
pleasure the word of praise from the Corporal 
— a far greater pleasure, by the way, than he 
had derived from the Great One's compliments 
— the praise of one artist to another, the rec- 
ognition of good work done, by one who him- 
self had helped in many good works and knew 



THE MINE 47 

well of what he spoke. " She's done, sir," the 
Corporal had said. "And if I may say so, sir, 
she's a credit to you. A mighty tricky job, 
sir, and I've seen plenty with long years in the 
Service that would ha' been stumped at times. 
I'm glad to have had a hand in it wi' you, sir. 
And all the men feel the same way about it." 
Ah well, the Subaltern thought as he halted 
at the joint of the T-piece, none of them felt 
the same about it as he himself did. He squat- 
ted there a moment, listening to the drip of 
water that was the only sound. Suddenly his 
heart leapt . . . was it the only sound? What 
was that other, if it could be called a sound? 
It was a sense rather, an indefinable blending 
of senses of hearing and feel and touch, a faint, 
barely perceptible "thump, thump," like the 
beat of a man's heart in his breast. He snapped 
off the light of his electric lamp and crouched 
breathless in the darkness, straining his ears 
to hear. He was soon satisfied. He had not 
lived these days past with the sound of digging 
in his ears by day and his dreams by night not 
to recognise the blows of a pick. There . . . 
they had stopped now; and in imagination he 
pictured the digger laying down the pick to 
shovel out the loosened earth. Then, after a 
pause, the measured thump, thump, went on 



48 BETWEEN THE LINES 

again. The Subaltern crawled along first one 
arm of the cross-section and then the other, 
halting every now and then to place his ear to 
the wet planking or the wetter earth. He lo- 
cated at last the point nearest to the sound, 
and without more waste of time scurried off 
down his tunnel to daylight. 

He was back in the mine again in less than 
half an hour — a bare thirty minutes, but each 
minute close packed with concentrated essence 
of thought and action. 

The nearest trench telephone had put him 
in touch with Battalion Headquarters, and 
through them with Brigade, Divisional, and 
General Headquarters. He had told his story 
and asked for his orders clearly, quickly, and 
concisely. The Germans were countermining. 
Their tunnel could not possibly miss ours, and, 
by the sound, would break through in thirty to 
sixty minutes. What were his orders 1 It took 
some little time for the orders to come, mainly 
because — although he knew nothing of it — his 
mine was part of a scheme for a general at- 
tack, and general attacks are affairs that can- 
not be postponed or expedited as easily as a 
cold lunch. But the Subaltern filled in the time 
of waiting, and when the orders did come he 
was ready for them or any other. They were 



THE MINE 49 

clear and crisp — he was to fire the mine, but 
only at the latest possible minute. That was 
all he got, and indeed all he wanted ; and, since 
they did not concern him, there is no need here 
to tell of the swirl of other orders that buzzed 
and ticked and talked by field telegraph and 
telephone for miles up and down and behind the 
British line. 

Before these orders had begun to take shape 
or coherency as a whole, the Subaltern was 
back listening to the thump, thump of the Ger- 
man picks, and busily completing his prepara- 
tions. It was near noon, and perhaps the 
workers would stop for a meal, which would 
give another hour for troops to be pushed up 
or whatever else the Generals wanted time for. 
It might even be that a fall of their roof, an 
extra inflow of water to their working, any one 
of the scores of troubles that hamper and hin- 
der underground mining might stop the crawl- 
ing advance of the German sappers for a day 
or two and allow the Subaltern's mine to play 
its appointed part at the appointed time of the 
grand attack. 

But meantime the Subaltern took no chances. 
First he connected up a short switch which in 
the last extreme of haste would allow him with 
one touch of his finger to blow up his mine and 



50 BETWEEN THE LINES 

himself with it. He buried or concealed the 
wires connecting the linked charges with the 
switch outside so as to have a chance of escape 
himself. He opened a portable telephone he 
had carried with him and joined up to the wire 
he had also carried in, and so was in touch with 
his Corporal and the world of the aboveground. 
All these things he did himself because there 
was no need to risk more than one man in case 
of a quick explosion. Then, his preparations 
complete, he sat down to wait and to listen to 
the thudding picks of the Germans. They were 
very near now, and with his ear to the wall the 
Subaltern could hear the shovels now as well 
as the picks. He shut his lamp off after a last 
look at his switch, his revolver, and the glisten- 
ing walls and mud-ooze floor of his tunnel, and 
sat still in the darkness. Once he whispered an 
answer into the telephone to his Corporal, and 
once he flicked his lamp on an instant to glance 
at the watch on his wrist. Then he crouched 
still and silent again. The thumping of his 
heart nearly drowned the thud of the picks, he 
was shivering with excitement, and his mouth 
grew dry and leathery. He felt a desire to 
smoke, and had his case out and a cigarette 
in his lips when it occurred to him that, when 
the Germans broke through, the smell of the 



THE MINE 51 

smoke would tell them instantly that they were 
in an occupied working. He counted on a cer- 
tain amount of delay and doubt on their part 
when their picks first pierced his wall, and he 
counted on that pause again to give him time to 
escape. So he put the cigarette away, and im- 
mediately was overwhelmed with a craving for 
it. He fought it for five minutes that felt like 
five hours, and felt his desire grow tenfold with 
each minute. It nearly drove him to doing 
what all the risk, all the discomfort of his 
cramped position, all the danger, had not done 
— to creep out and fire the mine without wait- 
ing for that last instant when the picks would 
break through. It could make little difference, 
he argued to himself, in the movements of those 
above. What could five minutes more, or ten, 
or even fifteen, matter now? It might even be 
that he was endangering the success of the ex- 
plosion by waiting, and it was perhaps wiser 
to crawl out at once and fire the mine — and he 
could safely light a cigarette then as soon as 
he was round the corner of the T. So he argued 
the matter out, fingering his cigarette-case and 
longing for the taste of the tobacco, and yet 
knowing in his inmost heart that he would not 
move, despite his arguments, until the first 
pick came through. He heard the strokes draw 



52 , BETWEEN THE LINES 

nearer and nearer, and now he held his breath 
and strained his eyes as each one was deliv- 
ered. The instant he had waited for came in 
exactly the fashion he had expected — a thud, a 
thread of yellow light piercing the black dark, 
a grunt of surprise from the pick-wielder at 
the lack of resistance to his stroke. All this 
was just what he had expected, had known 
would happen. The next stroke would show 
the digger that he was entering some hole. 
Then there would be cautious investigation, the 
sending back word to an officer, the slow and 
careful enlargement of the opening. And be- 
fore that moment came the Subaltern would be 
down his tunnel, and outside, and pressing the 
switch . . . 

But his programme worked out no further 
than that first instant and that first gleam of 
light. He saw the gleam widen suddenly as the 
pick was withdrawn, heard another quick blow, 
saw the round spot of light run out in little 
cracks and one wide rift, and suddenly the wall 
fell in, and he was staring straight into the 
German gallery, with a dark figure silhouetted 
clear down to the waist against the light of an 
electric bulb-lamp which hung from the gallery 
roof. For an instant the Subaltern's blood 
froze. The figure of the German was only sep- 



THE MINE 53 

arated from him by a bare three yards, and to 
his dark-blinded eyes it seemed that he him- 
self was standing in plain view in a brilliant 
blaze of light. Actually he was in almost com- 
plete darkness. The single light in the Ger- 
man gallery hardly penetrated through the 
gloom of his own tunnel, and what little did 
showed nothing to the eyes of the German, 
used to the lamp-light and staring suddenly 
into the black rift before him. But the Ger- 
man called out to someone behind him, twisted 
round, moved, stooping, back to the lamp and 
reached up a hand to it. The Subaltern backed 
away hastily, his eyes fixed on the glow of light 
in the opening. The hole had broken through 
on a curve of his tunnel, so that for fifteen or 
twenty feet back he could still see down the 
German gallery, could watch the man unhook 
the lamp and carry it back to the opening, 
thrust the lamp before him and lean in over 
the crumbling heap of earth his pick had 
brought down. The Subaltern stopped and 
drew a gasping breath and held it. Discovery 
was a matter of seconds now. He had left his 
firing switch, but he still carried the portable 
telephone slung from his shoulder, the earth- 
pin dangling from it. He had only to thrust the 
pin into the mud and he was connected up with 



54 BETWEEN THE LINES 

the Corporal at the outside switch, had only to 
shout one word, ' ' Fire ! ' ' — and it would all be 
over. Quickly but noiselessly he put his hand 
down to catch up the wire with the earth-pin. 
His hand touched the revolver-butt in his hol- 
ster, checked at it, closed round it and slid it 
softly out. All this had taken an instant of 
time, and as he raised his weapon he saw the 
German still staring hard under the upheld 
lamp into the gloom. He was looking the other 
way, and the Subaltern levelled the heavy re- 
volver and paused. The sights stood out clear 
and black against the figure standing in the 
glow of light — a perfect and unmissable tar- 
get. The man was bareheaded, and wore a 
mud-stained blue shirt with sleeves cut off 
above the elbow. The Subaltern moved the 
notched sights from under the armpit of the 
raised arm that held up the light, and steadied 
them on the round of the ear that stood out 
clear against the close-cropped black hair. He 
heard a guttural exclamation of wonder, saw 
the head come slowly round until the circle of 
the ear foreshortened and moved past his 
sights, and they were centred straight between 
the staring eyes. His finger contracted on the 
trigger, but a sudden qualm stayed him. It 
wasn't fair, it wasn't sporting, it was too like 



THE MINE 55 

shooting a sitting hare. And the man hadn't 
seen him even yet. Man? This was no man; 
a lad rather, a youth, a mere boy, with child- 
ish wondering eyes, a smooth oval chin, the 
mouth of a pretty girl. The Subaltern had 
a school-boy brother hardly younger than this 
boy; and a quick vision rose of a German 
mother and sisters — no, he couldn't shoot; it 
would be murder ; it — and then a quick start, an 
upward movement of the lamp, a sharp ques- 
tion, told him the boy had seen. The Subaltern 
spoke softly in fairly good German. "Run 
away, my boy. In an instant my mine will ex- 
plode. ' ' 

"Who is it? Who is there?" gasped the boy. 

The Subaltern chuckled, and grinned wick- 
edly. Swiftly he dropped the revolver, fum- 
bled a moment, and pulled a coil of capped fuse 
from his pocket. 

" It is the English, ' ' he said. " It is an Eng- 
lish mine that I now explode," and, on the 
word, lit the fuse and flung it, fizzing and spit- 
ting a jet of sparks and smoke, towards the 
boy. The lad flinched back and half turned to 
run, but the Subaltern saw him look round over 
his shoulder and twist back, saw the eyes glar- 
ing at the fiery thing in the mud, the dread- 
ful resolve grow swiftly on the set young face, 



56 BETWEEN THE LINES 

the teeth clamped on the resolve. He was go- 
ing to dash for the fuse, to try to wrench it 
out, and, as he supposed, prevent the mine ex- 
ploding. The Subaltern jerked up the revol- 
ver again. This would never do; the precious 
seconds were flying; at any moment another 
man might come. He would have saved this 
youngster if he could, but he could allow noth- 
ing to risk failure for his mine. "Get back," 
he said sharply. ' ' Get back quickly, or I shall 
shoot." 

But now what he had feared happened. A 
voice called, a scuffling footfall sounded in the 
German gallery, a dim figure pushed forward 
into the light beside the boy. The Subaltern 
saw that it was an officer, heard his angry oath 
in answer to the boy's quick words, his shout, 
"the light, fool — break it"; saw the clenched 
fist's vicious buffet in the boyish face and the 
quick grab at the electric bulb. The Subal- 
tern's revolver sights slid off the boy and hung 
an instant on the snarling face of the offi- 
cer. . . . 

In the confined space the roar of his heavy 
revolver rolled and thundered in reverberat- 
ing echoes, the swirling powder-reek blinded 
him and stung in his nostrils ; and as the smoke 
cleared he could see the boy scrambling back 



THE MINE 57 

along his gallery and the officer sprawled face 
down across the earth-heap in the light of the 
fallen lamp. 

The Subaltern smashed the lamp himself be- 
fore he too turned and plunged, floundering 
and slipping and stumbling, for his exit in an 
agony of haste and apprehension. It was all 
right, he told himself a dozen times ; the officer 
was done for — the back of that head and a 
past knowledge of a service revolver's work 
at close range told him that plain enough; it 
would take a good many minutes for the boy 
to tell his tale, and even then, if a party ven- 
tured back at once, it would take many more 
minutes in the dark — and he was glad he 
thought to smash the lamp — before they could 
find his charges or the wires. It was safe 
enough, but — the tunnel had never seemed so 
long or the going so slow. He banged against 
beams and supports, ploughed through sticky 
mud and churning water, rasped his knuckles, 
and bruised knees and elbows in his mad haste. 
It was safe enough, but — but — but — suppose 
there was no response to his pressure on the 
switch ; suppose there had been some silly mis- 
take in making the connections; suppose the 
battery wouldn't work. There were a score 
of things to go wrong. Thank goodness he 



58 BETWEEN THE LINES 

had overhauled and examined everything him- 
self ; although that again would only make it 
more appallingly awful if things didn't work. 
No time now, no chance to go back and put 
things right. Perhaps he ought to have stayed 
back there and made the contact. A quick end 
if it worked right, and a last chance to refix 
it if it didn't; yes, he . . . but here was the 
light ahead. He shouted "Fire!" at the top 
of his voice, still hurrying on and half cower- 
ing from the expected roar and shock of the 
explosion. Nothing happened. He shouted 
again and again as loud as his sobbing breath 
and labouring lungs would let him. Still — 
nothing; and it began to sear his brain as a 
dreadful certainty that he had failed, that his 
mine was a ghastly frost, that all the labour 
gone to its making and the good lives spent on 
it were wasted. He stumbled weakly out into 
the shaft, caught a glimpse of the Corporal's 
set face staring at the tunnel mouth, and tried 
once more to call out "Fire!" But the Cor- 
poral was waiting for no word. He had already 
got that, had heard the Subaltern 's first shouts 
roll down the tunnel, in fact was waiting with a 
finger on the exploding switch for the moment 
the Subaltern should appear. The finger 
moved steadily over as the Subaltern stumbled 



THE MINE 59 

into sight — and the solid earth heaved convul- 
sively, shuddered, and rocked and shook to 
the roaring blast of the explosion. 

The shock and the rush of air from the tun- 
nel-mouth caught the Subaltern, staggering to 
his knees, and flung him headlong. And as he 
picked himself up again the air darkened with 
whizzing clods and mud and dust and stones 
and dirt that rained down from the sky. Be- 
fore the echoes of the explosion had died away, 
before the last fragments and debris had fallen, 
there came the sound of another roar, the 
bellowing thunder of the British guns throw- 
ing a storm of shell and shrapnel between the 
German supports and the ruined trench. That, 
and another sound, told the Subaltern that the 
full fruits of his work were to be fully reaped 
— the sound of the guns and of the full, deep- 
chested, roaring cheers of the British infantry 
as they swarmed from their trenches and 
rushed to occupy the crater of the explosion. 

Later in the day, when the infantry had made 
good their possession of the place, had sand- 
bagged and fortified it to stand against the ex- 
pected counter-attacks, the Subaltern went to 
look over the ground and see at first and close 
hand the results of his explosion. Technically, 



60 BETWEEN THE LINES 

lie found it interesting ; humanly, it was merely 
sickening. The ground was one weltering 
chaos and confusion of tossed earth-heaps and 
holes, of broken beams and jagged-ended 
planks, of flung sandbags and wrecked barri- 
cading. Of trench or barricade, as trench and 
barricade, there remained, simply, no sign. 
The wreckage was scattered thick with a dread- 
ful debris of dead bodies, of bloody clothing, 
of helmets and broken rifles, burst packs and 
haversacks, bayonets, water-bottles, and shat- 
tered equipments. The Ambulance men were 
busy, but there were still many dead and dy- 
ing and wounded to be removed, wounded with 
torn flesh and mangled limbs, dead and dying 
with scorched and smouldering clothes. The 
infantry, hastily digging and filling sandbags 
and throwing up parapets on the far edge of 
the reeking explosion pit, had found many bod- 
ies caught in the descending avalanche of earth 
or buried in the collapsed trenches and dug- 
outs; and here and there, amid the confusion, 
a foot or a hand protruding stark from some 
earth-heap marked the death-place of other 
victims. The whole scene was one of death and 
desolation, of ruin and destruction, and the 
Subaltern turned from it sick at stomach. It 
was the first result of a big explosion he had 



THE MINE 61 

seen. This was the sort of thing that he had 
read so often summed up in a line of the Official 
Despatch or a two-line newspaper paragraph: 
"A mine was successfully exploded under a sec- 
tion of the enemy's trench." A mine — his 
mine. . . . "God!" the Subaltern said softly 
under his breath, and looked wonderingly about 
him. 

" 'E's a bloomin' little butcher, is that Leff- 
tenant of ours," the Corporal said that night. 
" 'Course it was a good bit o' work, an' he'd 
reason to be proud of it; but — well I thought 
I'd a strongish stomach, an' I've seen some 
dirty blood-an '-bones messes in my time but 
that scorchin' shambles near turned me over. 
An' he comes back, after lookin' at it, as cheer- 
ful as the cornerman o' a Christie Minstrel 
troupe, an' as pleased as a dog wi' two tails. 
Fair pleased, 'e was." 

But he was a little wrong. What had brought 
the Subaltern back with such a cheerful air was 
not the sight of his work, not the grim picture 
of the smashed trenches. It was an encounter 
he had had with a little group of German pris- 
oners, the recognising amongst them of a dirty, 
mud-stained blue shirt with sleeves cut off 
above the elbows, a close-cropped bare head, a 
boy's face with smooth oval chin and girlish 



62 BETWEEN THE LINES 

eyes. That one life saved was also his work, 
and, moreover, his own, his individual personal 
work. The mine's work he had directed, but 
others had shared it. It was the day's work — 
it was an incident of war — it was, after all, 
merely "a mine successfully exploded ..." 



ARTILLERY SUPPORT 

" . . . supported by a close and accurate ar- 
tillery fire . . ." — Extract from Official De- 
spatch. 

From his position in the "Observation Post" 
the artillery Forward Officer watched the fight 
raging along his front much as a spectator in 
the grand stand watches a football match. 
Through his glasses he could see every detail 
and movement of the fighters, see even their 
facial expressions, the grip of hands about their 
weapons. Queerly enough, it was something 
like looking at the dumb show of a cinema film. 
He could see a rifle pointed and the spit of 
flame from the muzzle without hearing any re- 
port, could see an officer gesticulating and his 
mouth opening and closing in obvious stento- 
rian shoutings without hearing the faintest 
sound of his voice, could even see the quick 
flash and puffing smoke of a grenade without 
catching the crash of its explosion. It was not 
that he was too far off to hear all these sounds, 
but simply because individually they were 

63 



64 BETWEEN THE LINES 

drowned in the continuous ear-filling roar of 
the battle. 

The struggle was keenly interesting and des- 
perately exciting, even from a spectator's point 
of view; and the interest and excitement were 
the greater to the Forward Officer, because he 
was playing a part, and an important part, in 
the great game spread before him. Beyond the 
line of a section of the British front white 
smoke-puffs were constantly bursting, over his 
head a succession of shells streamed rushing 
and shrieking; and the place where each of 
those puffs burst depended on him, each shell 
that roared overhead came in answer to his call. 
He was "observing" for a six-gun battery con- 
cealed behind a gentle slope over a mile away 
to his right rear, and, since the gunners at 
the battery could see nothing of the fight, noth- 
ing of their target, not even the burst of a 
single one of their shells, they depended solely 
on their Forward Officer to correct their aim 
and direct their fire. 

All along the front — or rather both the 
fronts, for the German batteries worked on 
exactly the same system — the batteries were 
pouring down their shells, and each battery 
was dependent for the accuracy of its fire on 
its own Observing Officer crouching somewhere 



ARTILLERY SUPPORT 65 

up in front and overlooking his battery's 
"zone." 

The fighting line surged forward or swayed 
back, checked and halted, moved again, now 
rapidly, now slowly and staggeringly, curved 
forward here and dinted in there, striving 
fiercely to hold its ground in this place, driving 
forward in that, or breaking, reeling back into 
the arms of the supports, swirling forward with 
them again. But no matter whether the lines 
moved forward or back, fast or slow, raggedly 
and unevenly, or in one long close-locked line, 
ever and always the shells soared over and 
burst beyond the line, just far enough barely 
to clear it if the fight were at close quarters; 
reaching out and on a hundred, two hundred, 
yards when the fighters drew apart for a mo- 
ment; always clear of their own infantry, and 
as exactly as possible on the fighting line of the 
enemy, for such is the essence of " close and 
accurate artillery support." 

The Forward Observing Officer, perched pre- 
cariously in an angle of the walls of a ruined 
cottage, stared through his glasses at the con- 
fusion of the fight for hour after hour until 
his eyes ached and his vision swam. The For- 
ward Officer had been there since daybreak, 
and because no shells obviously aimed at his 



66 BETWEEN THE LINES 

station had bombarded him — plenty of chance 
ones had come very close, but of course they 
didn't count — he was satisfied that he was rea- 
sonably secure, and told his Major back at the 
Battery so over his telephone. The succession 
of attack and counter-attack had ceased for the 
time being, and the Forward Officer let his 
glasses drop and shut his aching eyes for a 
moment. But, almost immediately, he had to 
open them and lift his head carefully, to peer 
out over the top of the broken wall; for the 
sudden crash of reopening rifle fire warned him 
that another move was coming. From far out 
on his left, beyond the range of his vision, the 
fire began. It beat down, wave upon wave, 
towards his front, crossed it, and went rolling 
on beyond his right. The initiative came from 
the British side, and, taking it as the prelude 
of an attack, developing perhaps out of sight 
on his left, the Forward Officer called up his 
Battery and quickened the rate of its fire upon 
the German line. In a few minutes he caught 
a quick stir in the British line, a glimpse of 
the row of khaki figures clambering from their 
trench and the flickering flash of their bayonets 
— and in an instant the flat ground beyond the 
trench was covered with running figures. They 
made a fair target that the German gunners, 



ARTILLERY SUPPORT 67 

rifles, and Maxims were quick to leap upon. 
The German trench streamed fire, the Ger- 
man shells — shrapnel and high-explosive — blew 
gaping rents in the running line. The line 
staggered and flinched, halted, recovered, and 
went on again, leaving the ground behind it 
dotted with sprawling figures. The space cov- 
ered by the Forward Officer's zone was flat and 
bare of cover clear to the German trench two 
hundred yards away. It was too deadly a 
stretch for that gallant line to cover; and be- 
fore it was half-way across, it faltered again, 
hung irresolute, and flung itself prone to 
ground. The level edge of the German trench 
suddenly became serrated with bobbing heads, 
flickered with moving figures, and the next mo- 
ment was hidden by the swarm of men that 
leaped from it and came charging across the 
open. This line too withered and wilted under 
the fire that smote it, but it gathered itself and 
hurled on again. The Forward Officer called 
down the shortening ranges to the guns, and 
the answering shrapnel fell fiercely on the Ger- 
man line and tore it to fragments — but the 
fragments still advanced. The remnant of the 
British line rose and flung forward to meet it, 
and as the two clashed the supports from either 
side poured out to help. As the dense mass of 



68 BETWEEN THE LINES 

Germans emerged, and knitted into close for- 
mation, the Forward Officer reeled off swift 
orders to the telephone. The shrieking tempest 
of his shells fell upon the mass, struck and 
slew wholesale, struck and slew again. The 
mass shivered and broke ; but although part of 
it vanished back under the cover of the trench, 
although another part lay piled in a wreckage 
of dead and wounded, a third part straggled 
forward and charged into the fight. The Brit- 
ish line was overborne, and pushed struggling 
back until fresh supports brought it fresh life 
and turned the tide again. The Germans sur- 
viving the charge were killed, wounded, or 
taken prisoners, and the Forward Officer, lift- 
ing his fire and pouring it on the German 
trench, checked for the moment any further 
rush of reinforcements. The British line ran 
forward to a field track running parallel to the 
trenches and nearly midway between them, 
flung itself down to escape the bullets that 
stormed across and began, as rapidly as the 
men's cramped position would allow, to dig 
themselves in. To their right and left the field 
track sank a foot or two below the surface of 
the field, and this scanty but precious shelter 
had allowed the rest of the line to get half- 
way across and hold on to get its breath and 



ARTILLERY SUPPORT 69 

allow a constant spray of supports to dash 
across the open and reinforce it. Now, the 
centre, where the track ran bare and flat across 
the field, plied frantic shovels to heap up some 
sort of cover that would allow them also to 
hang on in conformation of the whole line and 
gather breath and reinforcements for the next 
rush. 

The Germans saw plainly enough what was 
the plan, and took instant steps to upset it. 
Their first and best chance was to thrust hard 
at the weak and ill-protected centre, overwhelm 
it and then roll up the lines to right and left 
of it. 

A tornado of shell fire ushered in the new 
assault. The shells burst in running crashes 
up and down the advanced line, and up and 
down the British trench behind it; driving 
squalls of shrapnel swept the ground between 
the two, and, in addition, a storm of rifle and 
machine-gun bullets rained along the scanty 
parapet, whistled and droned and hissed across 
the open. And then, suddenly, the assault was 
launched from all along the German line. 

At the same instant a shell struck the wall 
of the Forward Officer's station, burst with a 
terrific crash, swept three parts of the remain- 
ing wall away in a cloud of shrieking splinters 



70 BETWEEN THE LINES 

and swirling dust of brick and plaster, and 
threw the Forward Officer headlong half a 
dozen yards. By some miracle he was un- 
touched. His first thought was for the tele- 
phone — the connecting link with his guns. He 
scrambled over the debris to the dug-out or 
shelter-pit behind his corner and found tele- 
phonist and telephone intact. He dropped on 
hands and knees and crawled over the rubble 
and out beyond the end of the wall, for the 
cloud of smoke and plaster and brick-dust still 
hung heavily about the ruin. Here, in the 
open as he was, the air sang like tense harp- 
strings to the passage of innumerable bullets, 
the ground about his feet danced to their drum- 
ming, flicked and spat little spurts of mud all 
over him. 

But the Forward Officer paid little heed to 
these things. For one moment his gaze was 
riveted horror-stricken on the scene of the 
fight; the next he was on his feet, heedless of 
the singing bullets, heedless of the roar and 
crash of another shell that hit the ground and 
flung a cart-load of earth and mud whizzing and 
thumping about him, heedless of everything 
except the need to get quickly to the telephone. 

"Tell the Battery, Germans advancing — 
heavy attack on our front!" he panted to the 



ARTILLERY SUPPORT 71 

telephonist, jumped across to his corner, and 
heaved himself up into place. The dust had 
cleared now, so that he could see. And what 
he could see made him catch his breath. An 
almost solid line of Germans were clear of 
their trenches and pushing rapidly across the 
open on the weak centre. And the Battery's 
shells were falling behind the German line and 
still on their trenches. Swiftly the Forward 
Officer began to reel off his corrections of an- 
gles and range, and as the telephonist passed 
them on gun after gun began to pitch its shells 
on the advancing line. 

The British rifles were busy too, and their 
fire rose in one continuous roar. But the fire 
was weakest from the thin centre line, the spot 
where the attack was heaviest. The guns were 
in full play again, and the shells were blasting 
quick gaps out of the advancing line. But the 
line came on. The rifles beat upon it, and a 
machine-gun on the less heavily pressed left 
turned and mowed the Germans down in 
swathes. Still the line came on stubbornly. It 
was broken and ragged now, and advanced 
slowly, because the front ranks were constantly 
melting away under the British fire. The For- 
ward Officer watched with straining eyes glued 
to his glasses. A shell "whooped" past close 



72 BETWEEN THE LINES 

over his head, and burst just beyond him. He 
neither turned his head nor moved his glasses. 
One, two, three, four shells burst short, a splin- 
ter and bullets sang past him; two more burst 
overhead, and the shrapnel clashed and rattled 
amongst the stone and brick of the ruins. 
Without moving, the Forward Officer began to 
call a fresh string of orders. The rush of his 
shells ceased for a moment while the gunners 
adjusted the new angles and ranges. ' ' Number 
One fired. Two fired. Three, Four, Five, Six 
fired, sir," called the telephonist, and as he 
spoke there came the shrieks of the shells, and 
the white puffs of the bursts low down and 
between the prone British line and the advanc- 
ing Germans. 

' ' Number Three, one-oh minutes more left ! ' ' 
shouted the Forward Officer. ''Number Five, 
add twenty-five — repeat. ' ' 

Again came the running bursts and puffing 
white smoke, and satisfied this time with their 
line, position, and distance, the Forward Officer 
shouted for "Gun-fire," jumped down and 
across to the telephonist's shelter-pit. 

"I'm putting a belt of fire just ahead of our 
line," he shouted, curving his fingers about his 
lips and the mouthpiece in an attempt to shut 
out the uproar about them. ' ' If they can come 



ARTILLERY SUPPORT 73 

through it we're done — infantry can't hold 'em. 
Give me every round you can, and as fast as 
you can, please." He ran back to his place. 
A cataract of shells poured their shrapnel down 
along a line of which the nearest edge was a 
bare twenty yards from the British front. The 
Forward Officer fixed his eyes on the string of 
white smoke-puffs with their centre of winking 
flame that burst and burst and burst unceas- 
ingly. If one showed out of its proper place 
he shouted to the telephonist and named the 
delinquent gun, and asked for the lay and fuse- 
setting to be checked. 

The advancing Germans reached at last the 
strip of ground where his shrapnel hailed and 
lashed, reached the strip and pushed into it — 
but not past it. Up to the shrapnel zone the 
advance could press; through, it could not. 
Under the shrapnel nothing could live. It 
swept the ground in driving gust on gust, 
swept and besomed it bare of life. Here and 
there, in ones and twos and little knots and 
groups, the Germans strove desperately to push 
on. They came as far as that deadly fire belt ; 
and in ones and twos and little knots and groups 
they stayed there and died. Supports hurried 
up and hurled themselves in, and a spasm of 
fresh strength and fury lifted the line and 



74 BETWEEN THE LINES 

heaved it forward. So far the fire of its fury 
brought it; and there the hosing shrapnel met 
it, swept down and washed it away, and beat 
it out to the last spark and the last man. 

But from the German trenches another as- 
sault was forming, from the German batteries 
another squall of shell-fire smote the British 
line ; and to his horror, the Forward Officer saw 
his own shells coming slower and slower, the 
smoke-bursts growing irregular and slower 
again. He leaped down and rushed to the tele- 
phone. 

Back in the Battery the telephone wires ran 
into a dug-out that was the brain centre of the 
guns, and from here the Forward Officer's di- 
rections emerged and were translated to the 
gunners through the Battery Commander and 
the Battery Sergeant-Major's megaphone. 

All the morning the gunners followed those 
orders blindly, slewing the hot gun-muzzles a 
fraction this way or that, making minute ad- 
justments on sights and range drums and shell 
fuses. They could see no glimpse of the fight, 
but, more or less accurately, they could follow 
its varying fortunes and trace its movements 
by the orders that came through to them. 
When they had to send their shells further 
back, the enemy obviously were being pressed 



ARTILLERY SUPPORT 75 

back; when the fire had to be brought closer 
the enemy were closer. An urgent call for 
rapid fire with an increasing range meant our 
infantry attacking; with a lessening range, 
their being attacked. 

Occasionally the Battery Commander passed 
to the Section Commanders items of news from 
the Forward Officer, and they in turn told the 
"Number One" in charge of the guns, and the 
gun detachments. 

Such a message was passed along when the 
Forward Officer telephoned news of the heavy 
pressure on the weakened centre. Every man 
in the Battery knew what was expected, and 
detachment vied with detachment in the speedy 
correcting of aim and range, and the rapid 
service of their guns. When the order came 
for a round of "Battery fire" — which calls for 
the guns to fire in their turn from right to left 
— one gun was a few seconds late in reporting 
ready, and every other man at every other gun 
fretted and chafed impatiently as if each sec- 
ond had been an hour. 

At another message from the Forward Officer 
the Battery Commander called for Section 
Commanders. The Sergeant-Major clapped 
megaphone to mouth and shouted, and two 
young subalterns and a sergeant jumped from 



76 BETWEEN THE LINES 

their places, and raced for the dug-out. The 
Major spoke rapidly and tersely. "We are 
putting down a belt of shrapnel in front of 
our own infantry — very close to them. You 
know what that means — the most careful and 
exact laying and fusing, and fire as hot and 
heavy as you can make it. The infantry can't 
hold 'em. They're depending on us; the line 
depends on us. Tell your men so. Be off, 
now." The three saluted, whirled on their 
heels, and were off. They told their men, and 
the men strained every nerve to answer ade- 
quately to the call upon them. The rate of fire 
worked up faster and faster. Between the 
thunder-claps of the gun the Sergeant-Major's 
megaphone bellowed, ' ' Number Six, check your 
lay." Number Six missed the message, but 
the nearest gun caught the word and passed it 
along. The Section Commander heard, saluted 
to show he had heard and understood, and ran 
himself to check the layer's aim. 

Up to now the Battery had worked without 
coming under any serious fire. There were al- 
ways plenty of rifle bullets coming over, and 
an occasional one of the shells that roared con- 
stantly past or over fell amongst the guns. A 
few men had been wounded, and one had been 
killed, and that was all. 



AETILLEEY SUPPOBT 77 

Then, quite suddenly, a tempest of high- 
explosive shell rained down on the battery, in 
front of, behind, over, and amongst the guns. 
Instinctively the men hesitated in their work, 
but the next instant the voices of the Section 
Commanders brought them to themselves. 
There were shelter-pits and dug-outs close by, 
and, without urgent need of their fire, the guns 
might be left while the gunners took cover till 
the storm was over. But there could be no 
thought of that now, while the picture was in 
everyone's mind of the infantry out there being 
hard pressed and overborne by the weight of 
the assault. So the gunners stayed by their 
guns and loaded, laid, and fired as fast as they 
could serve their pieces. The gun shields give 
little or no protection from high-explosive 
shells, because these burst overhead and fling 
their fragments straight down, burst in rear, 
and hurl j agger splinters outwards in every 
direction. The men were as open and unpro- 
tected to them as bare flesh is to bullet or cold 
steel ; but they knelt or sat in their places, and 
pushed their work into a speed that was only 
limited by the need for absolute accuracy. 

A shell burst close in rear of Number One 
gun, and the whirlwind of splinters and bullets 
struck down half the detachment at a blow. 



78 BETWEEN THE LINES 

The fallen men were lifted clear, the remaining 
gnnners took np their appointed share of the 
lost men's duties. A shell was slung in, the 
breech slammed shut, the firing-lever jerked — ■ 
and Number One gun was in action again and 
firing almost as fast as before. The sergeant 
in charge of another gun was killed instantane- 
ously by a shrapnel bullet in the head. 

His place was taken by the next senior before 
the last convulsive tremors had passed through 
the dead man's muscles; and the gun kept on 
without missing a round. 

The shell-fire grew more and more intense. 
The air was thick and choking with smoke and 
chemical fumes, and vibrant with the rush and 
shriek of the shells, the hum of bullets, and the 
ugly whirr of splinters, the crash of impacting 
shells, and ear-splitting crack of the guns' dis- 
charge, the "r-r-rupp" of shrapnel on the wet 
ground, the metallic clang of bullets and steel 
fragments on the gun-shields and mountings. 
But through all the inferno the gunners worked 
on, swiftly but methodically. After each shot 
the layers glared anxiously into the eye-piece 
of their sights and made minute movements of 
elevating and traversing wheels, the men at the 
range-drums examined them carefully and re- 
adjusted them exactly, the fuse-setters twisted 



ARTILLERY SUPPORT 79 

the rings marking the fuse's time of burning 
until they were correct literally to a hair-line ; 
every man working as if the gun were shooting 
for a prize-competition cup. Their care, as 
well as their speed, was needed ; for, more than 
any cup, good men's lives were at stake and 
hanging on their close and accurate shooting. 
For if the sights were a shade to right or left 
of their " aiming point," if the range were 
shortened by a fractional turn of the drum, if 
a fuse was wrongly set to one of the scores of 
tiny marks on its ring, that shell might fall on 
the British line, take toll of the lives of friend 
instead of foe, go to break down the hard- 
pressed British resistance instead of uphold- 
ing it. 

Man after man was hit by shell splinter or 
bullet, but no man left his place unless he was 
too badly injured to carry on. The seriously 
wounded dragged themselves clear as best they 
could and crawled to any cover from the burst- 
ing shells; the dead lay where they fell. The 
detachments were reduced to skeleton crews. 
One Section Commander laid and fired a gun ; 
another, with a smashed thigh, sat and set fuses 
until he fainted from loss of blood and from 
pain. The Battery Commander took the tele- 
phone himself and sent the telephonist to help 



80 BETWEEN THE LINES 

the guns; and when a bursting shell tore out 
one side of the sandbags of the dug-out the Bat- 
tery Commander rescued himself and the in- 
strument from the wreckage, mended the 
broken wire, and sat in the open, alternately 
listening at the receiver and yelling exhorta- 
tion and advice to the gunners through the 
Sergeant-Major's megaphone. The Sergeant- 
Major had gone on the run to round up every 
available man, and brought back at the double 
the Battery cooks, officers' grooms, mess order- 
lies and servants. The slackening fire of the 
Battery spurted again and ran up to some- 
thing like its own rate. And the Major cheered 
the men on to a last effort, shouting the For- 
ward Officer's message that the attack was fail- 
ing, was breaking, was being wiped out mainly 
by the Battery's fire. 

And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the 
tornado of shell-fire about them ceased, shifted 
its storm-centre, and fell roaring and crashing 
and hammering on an empty hedge and ditch 
a full three hundred yards away. 

And at the same moment the Major shouted 
exultingly. ' ' They 're done ! " he bellowed down 
the megaphone ; ' ' they 're beat ! The attack ' ' — ■ 
and he fell back on the Forward Officer's own 
words — "the attack is blotted out." 



ARTILLERY SUPPORT 81 

Whereat the panting gunners cheered faintly 
and short-windedly, and took contentedly the 
following string of orders to lengthen the range 
and slacken the rate of fire. And the Battery 
made shift to move its dead from amongst the 
gun and wagon wheels, to bandage and tie up 
its wounded with " first field dressings," to 
shuffle and sort the detachments and redistrib- 
ute the remaining men in fair proportion 
amongst the remaining guns, to telephone the 
Brigade Headquarters to ask for stretcher- 
bearers and ambulance, and more shells — doing 
it all, as it were, with one hand while the other 
kept the guns going, and the shells pounding 
down their appointed paths. 

For the doing of two or more things at once, 
and doing them well, the while in addition 
highly unpleasant things are being done to 
them, is all a part of the Gunners' game of 
"close and accurate artillery support." 



''NOTHING TO REPORT" 

"On the Western Front there is nothing to 
report. All remains quiet." — Official De- 
spatch. 

The 7th (Territorial) King's Own Asterisks 
had ''taken over" their allotted portion of the 
trenches and were settling themselves in for 
the night. When the two facts are taken in 
conjunction that it was an extremely unpleasant 
night, cold, wet and bleak, and the 7th were 
thoroughly happy and would not have ex- 
changed places with any other battalion in 
Flanders, it will be very plain to those who 
know their Front that the 7th K.O.A. were ex- 
ceedingly new to the game. They were, and 
actually this was their first spell of duty in 
the forward firing trenches. 

They had been out for some weeks, weary 
weeks, filled with the digging of communication 
trenches well behind the firing trenches, with 
drills and with various ' ' fatigues ' ' of what they 
considered a nawying rather than a military 
nature. But every task piled upon their re- 

82 



"NOTHING TO REPORT" 83 

luctant shoulders had been performed promptly 
and efficiently, and now at last they were en- 
joying the reward of their zeal — a turn in the 
forward trenches. 

The men were unfeignedly pleased with 
themselves, with the British Army, and with 
the whole world. The non-coms, were anxious 
and desperately keen to see everything in 
apple-pie order. The Company officers were 
inclined to be anxious, and the O.C. was wor- 
ried and concerned to the verge of nerves. He 
pored over the trench maps that had been 
handed to him, he imagined assaults delivered 
on this point and that, hurried, at the point of 
the pencil, his supports along various blue and 
red lines to the threatened angles of the wrig- 
gley line that represented the forward trench, 
drew lines from his machine-gun implacements 
to the red-inked crosses of the German wire 
entanglements, frowned and cogitated over the 
pencil crosses placed by the O.C. of the re- 
lieved battalion where the lurking-places of 
German maxims were suspected. Afterwards 
he made a long and exhaustive tour of the 
muddy trenches, concealing his anxiety from 
the junior officers, and speaking lightly and 
cheerfully to them — following therein truly and 
instinctively the first principle of all good com- 



84 BETWEEN THE LINES 

manders to show the greater confidence as, they 
feel it the less. He returned to the Battalion 
Headquarters, situated in a very grimy cellar 
of a shell-wrecked house behind the support 
trenches, and partook of a belated dinner of 
tinned food flavoured with grit and plaster dust. 
The signallers were established with their 
telephones at the foot of the stone stair out- 
side the cellar door, and into this cramped 
"exchange" ran the telephone wires from the 
companies in the trenches and from the Brigade 
Headquarters a mile or two back. Every word 
that the signallers spoke was plainly heard in 
the cellar, and every time the Colonel heard 
"Hello! Yes, this is H.Q.," he sat motionless 
waiting to hear what message was coming 
through. When his meal was finished he re- 
sisted an impulse to "phone" all the forward 
trenches, asking how things were, unlaced his 
boots, paused, and laced them up again, lay 
down on a very gritty mattress in a corner of 
the cellar, and tried to sleep. For the first 
hour every rattle of rifle fire, every thud of a 
gun, every call on the telephone brought him up 
on his pillow, his ears straining to catch any 
further sound. After about the tenth alarm 
he reasoned the matter out with himself some- 
thing after this fashion: — 



< 'NOTHING TO REPORT " 85 

"The battalion is occupying a position that 
has not been attacked for weeks, and it is dis- 
posed as other Regular battalions have been, 
and no more and no less effectually than them. 
There isn't an officer or man in the forward 
trenches who cannot be fully trusted to keep 
a look-out and to resist an attack to the last 
breath. There is no need to worry or keep 
awake, and to do so is practically admitting 
a distrust of the 7th K.O.A. I trust them 
fully, and therefore I ought to go to sleep." 

Whereupon the Colonel sat up, took off his 
wet boots, lay down again, resolutely closed 
his eyes — and remained wide awake for the 
rest of the night. 

But if there be any who feel inclined to smile 
at the nervousness of an elderly, stoutish, and 
constitutionally easy-going Colonel of Territo- 
rials, I would remind them of a few facts. The 
Colonel had implicit faith in the stout-hearted- 
ness, the spirit, the fighting quality of his bat- 
talion. He had had the handling and the train- 
ing of them ever since mobilisation, and he 
knew every single man of them as well as they 
knew themselves. They had done everything 
asked of them and borne light-heartedly rough 
quarters, bad weather, hard duties. But — and 
one must admit it a big and serious "but" — 



86 BETWEEN THE LINES 

to-night might be their real and their first test- 
ing in the flame and fire of War. 

Even as no man knows how he will feel and 
behave under fire, until he has been under fire, 
so no regiment or battalion knows. The men 
were razor-keen for action, but that very keen- 
ness might lead them into a rashness, a fool- 
hardiness, which would precipitate action. The 
Colonel believed they would stand and fight to 
the last gasp and die to the last man rather 
than yield a yard of their trench. He believed 
that of them even as he believed it of himself — 
but he did not know it of them any more than 
he knew it of himself. Men, apparently every 
bit as good as him, had before now developed 
some " white streak," some folly, some stupid- 
ity, in the stress and strain of action. Other 
regiments, apparently as sound as his, had in 
the records of history failed or broken in a 
crisis. He and his were new and untried, and 
military commanders for innumerable ages 
had doubted and mistrusted new and untried 
troops. 

Well ... he had done his best, and at least 
the next twenty-four hours should show him 
how good or how bad that best had been. But 
meantime let no one blame him for his anxiety 
or nervousness. 



" NOTHING TO REPORT" 87 

And meantime the 7th Asterisks, serenely 
unaware of their Commanding Officer's worry 
and doubt — and to be fair to them and to him 
it must be stated that they would have flouted 
scornfully any suggestion that he had held 
them — joyfully set about the impossible task 
of making themselves comfortable, and the con- 
genial one of making the enemy extremely un- 
comfortable. The sentries were duly posted, 
and spent an entirely unnecessary proportion 
of their time peering over the parapet. 

There were more Verey pistol lights burnt 
during the night than would have sufficed a 
trench-hardened battalion for a month, and the 
Germans opposite, having in hand a little job 
of adding to their barbed-wire defences, were 
puzzled and rather annoyed by the unwonted 
display of fireworks. They foolishly vented 
their annoyance by letting off a few rounds of 
rapid fire at the opposition, and the 7th As- 
terisks eagerly accepted the challenge, manned 
their parapets and proceeded to pour a perfect 
hurricane of fire back to the challengers. The 
Germans, with the exception of about a dozen 
picked sharp-shooting snipers, ceased to fire 
and took careful cover. 

The snipers, during the Asterisks ' three min- 
utes of activity, succeeded in scoring seven hits, 



88 BETWEEN THE LINES 

and the Asterisks found themselves in posses- 
sion of a casualty list of one killed and six 
wounded before the Company and platoon com- 
manders had managed to stop the shooting and 
get the men down under cover. 

When the shooting had ceased and the casual- 
ties had been cleared out on their way to the 
dressing station, the Asterisks recharged their 
rifle-magazines and spent a good hour discuss- 
ing the incident, those men who had been be- 
side the casualties finding themselves and their 
narratives of how it happened in great demand. 

And one of the casualties, having insisted, 
when his slight wound was dressed, on return- 
ing to the trench, had to deliver a series of 
lecturettes on what it felt like, what the Medi- 
cal said, how the other fellows were, how the 
dressing station was worked, and similar sub- 
jects, with pantomimic illustrations of how he 
was holding his rifle when the bullet came 
through the loophole, and how he was still fully 
capable of continuing to hold it. 

A heavy shower dispersed the audiences, 
those of the men who were free to do so return- 
ing to muddy and leaky dug-outs, and the re- 
mainder taking up their positions at the para- 
pet. There was as much chance of these latter 
standing on their head as there was of their 



" NOTHING TO REPORT" 89 

going to sleep, but the officers made so many 
visiting rounds to be certain of their sentries' 
wakefulness, and spent so long on each round 
and on the fascinating peeps over into "the 
neutral ground," that the end of one round 
was hardly completed before it was time to 
begin the next. 

Occasionally the Germans sent up a flare, 
and every man and officer of the K.O.A. who 
was awake stared out through the loopholes in 
expectation of they knew not what. They also 
fired off a good many ' ' pistol lights, ' ' and it was 
nearly 4 a.m. before the Germans ventured to 
send out their working-party over the parapet. 
Once over, they followed the usual routine, 
throwing themselves flat in the mud and rank 
grass when a light flared up and remaining mo- 
tionless until it died out, springing to silent 
and nervous activity the instant darkness fell, 
working mostly by sense of touch, and keeping 
one eye always on the British parapet for the 
first hint of a soaring light. 

The "neutral ground" between the trenches 
was fairly thickly scattered over with dead, the 
majority of them German, and it was easy 
enough for an extra score or so of men, lying 
prone and motionless as the dead themselves, 
to be overlooked in the shifting light. The work 



90 BETWEEN THE LINES 

was proceeding satisfactorily and was almost 
completed when a mischance led to the exposure 
of the party. 

One of the workers was in the very act of 
crawling over the parapet when a British light 
flared. Half-way over he hesitated one moment 
whether to leap back or forward, then hur- 
riedly leapt down in front of the parapet and 
flung himself flat on his face. He was just too 
late. The lights revealed him exactly as he 
leapt, and a wildly excited King's Own Asterisk 
pulled back the cut-off of his magazine and 
opened rapid fire, yelling f renziedly at the same 
time that they were coming — were coming — 
were attacking — were charging — look out! 

Every K.O.A. on his feet lost no time in join- 
ing in the "mad minute" and every K.O.A. 
who had been asleep or lying down was up in 
a twinkling and blazing over the parapet be- 
fore his eyes were properly opened. The ma- 
chine-gun detachment were more circumspect 
if no less eager. The screen before the wide 
loophole was jerked away and the fat barrel of 
the maxim peered out and swung smoothly from 
side to side, looking for a fair mark. 

It had not long to wait. The German work- 
ing-party "stuck it out" for a couple of min- 
utes, but with light after light flaming into 



"NOTHING TO BEPOBT" 91 

the sky and exposing them pitilessly, with the 
British trench crackling and spitting fire from 
end to end, with the bullets hissing and whis- 
tling over them, and hailing thick amongst 
them, their nerves gave and broke; in a fran- 
tic desire for life and safety they flung away 
the last chance of life and safety their prone 
and motionless position gave them. 

They scrambled to their feet, a score of long- 
cloaked, crouching figures, glaringly plain and 
distinct in the vivid light, and turned to run 
for their trench. The sheeting bullets caught 
half a dozen and dropped them before they had 
well stood up, stumbled another two or three 
over before they could stir a couple of paces, 
went on cutting down the remainder swiftly 
and mercilessly. The remainder ran, stumbling 
and tripping and staggering, their legs ham- 
pered by their long coats, their feet clogged 
and slipping in the wet, greasy mud. The eye 
glaring behind the swinging lights of the maxim 
caught that clear target of running figures, the 
muzzle began to jet forth a stream of fire and 
hissing bullets, the cartridge belt to click, rac- 
ing through the breach. 

The bullets cut a path of flying mud-splashes 
across the bare ground to the runners, played 
a moment about their feet, then lifted and 



92 BETWEEN THE LINES 

swept across and across — once, twice, thrice. 
On the first sweep the thudding bullets found 
their targets, on the second they still caught 
some of them, on the third they sang clear 
across and into the parapet, for no figures were 
left to check their flight. The working party 
was wiped out. 

It took the excited riflemen another minute 
or two to realise that there was nothing left to 
shoot at except an empty parapet and some 
heaps of huddled forms ; but the pause to refill 
the empty magazines steadied them, and then 
the fire died away. 

The whole thing was over so quickly that the 
rifle fire had practically ceased before the Ar- 
tillery behind had time to get to work, and by 
the time they had flung a few shells to burst in 
thunder and lightning roar and flash over the 
German parapet, the storm of rifle fire had 
slackened and passed. Hearing it die away, 
the gunners also stopped, reloaded, and laid 
their pieces, waited the reports of their For- 
ward Officers, and on receiving them turned 
into their dug-outs and their blankets again. 

But the batteries covering the front held by 
the Asterisks remained by their guns and con- 
tinued to throw occasional rounds into the Ger- 
man trenches. Their Forward Officers had 



" NOTHING TO REPORT" 93 

passed on the word received from the Asterisks 
of a sharp attack quickly beaten back — that 
being the natural conclusion drawn from that 
leaping figure on the parapet and the presence 
of Germans in the open — and the guns kept 
up a slow rate of fire more with the idea of 
showing the enemy that the defence was awake 
and waiting for them than of breaking up an- 
other possible attack. The battalions of Regu- 
lars to either side of the Asterisks had more 
correctly diagnosed the situation as " false 
alarm" or "ten rounds rapid on working par- 
ties," and their supporting Artillery did no 
more than carry on their usual night firing. 

The result of it all was that the Asterisks 
throughout the night enjoyed the spectacle of 
some very pretty artillery fire in the dark on 
and over the trenches facing them, and also 
the much less pleasing one of German shells 
bursting in the British trenches, and especially 
in those of the K.O.A. They had the heaviest 
share on the simple and usual principle of re- 
taliation, whereby if our Section A of trenches 
is shelled we shell the German section facing 
it, and vice versa. 

The fire was by no means heavy as artillery 
fire goes these days, and at first the Asterisks 
were not greatly disturbed by it. But even a 



94 BETWEEN THE LINES 

rate of three or four shells every ten or fifteen 
minutes is galling, and necessitates the keeping 
of close cover or the loss of a fair number of 
men. It took half a dozen casualties to impress 
firmly on the Asterisks the need of keeping 
cover. Shell casualties have an extremely ugly 
look, and some of the Asterisks felt decidedly 
squeamish at sight of theirs — especially of one 
where the casualty had to be collected piece by 
piece, and removed in a sack. 

For an hour before dawn the battalion ' ' stood 
to," lining the trench with loaded rifles ready 
after the usual and accepted fashion, shiver- 
ing despite their warm clothing and mufflers, 
and woollen caps and thick great-coats in the 
raw-edged cold of the breaking day. For an 
hour they stood there listening to the whine of 
over-head bullets and the sharp ' ' slap ' ' of well- 
aimed ones in the parapet, the swish and crash 
of shells, the distant patter of rifle fire and 
the boom of the guns. 

That hour is perhaps always the worst of 
the twenty-four. The rousing from sleep, the 
turning out from warm or even from wet blan- 
kets, the standing still in a water-logged trench, 
with everything — fingers and clothes and rifle 
and trench-sides — cold and wet and clammy to 
the touch, and smeared with sticky mud and 



"NOTHING TO KEPOBT" 95 

clay, all combine to make the morning "stand 
to arms ' ' an experience that no amount of repe- 
tition ever accustoms one to or makes more 
bearable. 

Even the Asterisks, fresh and keen and en- 
thusiastic as they were, with all the interest 
that novelty gave to the proceedings, found the 
hour long-drawn and trying; and it was with 
intense relief that they saw the frequently con- 
sulted watches mark the finish of the time, and 
received the word to break off from their vigil. 

They set about lighting fires and boiling 
water for tea, and frying a meagre bacon ra- 
tion in their mess-tin lids, preparing and eating 
their breakfast. The meal over, they began 
on their ordinary routine work of daily trench 
life. 

Picked men were told off as snipers to worry 
and harass the enemy. They were posted at 
loopholes and in various positions that com- 
manded a good outlook, and they fired care- 
fully and deliberately at loopholes in the enemy 
parapet, at doors and windows of more or less 
wrecked buildings in rear of the German lines, 
at any and every head or hand that showed 
above the German parapet. In the intervals 
of firing they searched through their glasses 
every foot of parapet, every yard of ground, 



96 BETWEEN THE LINES 

every tree or bush, hayrick or broken building 
that looked a likely spot to make cover for a 
sniper on the other side. If their eye caught 
the flash of a rifle, the instantly vanishing spurt 
of haze or hot air — too thin and filmy to be 
called smoke — that spot was marked down, 
long and careful search made for the hidden 
sniper, and a sort of Bisley * ' disappearing tar- 
get" shoot commenced, until the opponent was 
either hit or driven to abandon his position. 

The enemy's snipers were, of course, playing 
exactly the same game, and either because they 
were more adept at it, or because the Asterisks' 
snipers were more reluctant to give up a posi- 
tion after it was "spotted" and hung on game- 
ly, determined to fight it out, a slow but steady 
tally was added to the Asterisks' casualty list. 

Along the firing and communication trenches 
parties set to work of various sorts, baling out 
water from the trench bottom, putting in 
brushwood or brick foundations, building up 
and strengthening dug-outs and parapets, fill- 
ing sandbags in readiness for night work and 
repairs on any portion damaged by shell fire. 

By now they were learning to keep well be- 
low the parapet, not to linger in portions of 
the communication trench that were enfiladed 
by shrapnel, to stoop low and pass quickly at 



"NOTHING TO REPORT" 97 

exposed spots where the snipers waited a 
chance to catch an unwary head. They had 
learned to press close and flat against the face 
of the trench or to get well down at the first 
hint of the warning rush of an approaching 
shell; they were picking up neatly and quickly 
all the worst danger spots and angles and cor- 
ners to be avoided except in time of urgent 
need. 

One thing more was needed to complete their 
education in the routine of trench warfare, and 
the one thing came about noon just as the As- 
terisks were beginning to feel pleasant antici- 
pations of the dinner hour. A faint and rather 
insignificant "bang" sounded out in front. The 
Asterisks never even noticed it, but next mo- 
ment when something fell with a thudding 
"splosh" on the wet ground behind the trench 
the men nearest the spot lifted their heads 
and stared curiously. Another instant and with 
a thunderous roar and a leaping cloud of thick 
smoke the bomb burst. The men ducked has- 
tily, but one or two were not quick enough or 
lucky enough to escape, although at that short 
distance they were certainly lucky in escaping 
with nothing worse than flesh wounds from the 
fragments of old iron, nails and metal splin- 
ters that whirled outwards in a circle from the 



98 BETWEEN THE LINES 

bursting bomb. Everyone heard the second 
shot and many saw the bomb come over in a 
high curve. 

As it dropped it appeared to be coming 
straight down into the trench and every man 
had an uncomfortable feeling that the thing 
was going to fall directly on him. Actually it 
fell short and well out in front of the trench 
and only a few splinters and a shower of earth 
whizzed over harmlessly high. 

The third was another "over" and the fourth 
another "short" and the Asterisks, unaware of 
the significance of the closing-in "bracket" be- 
gan to feel relief and a trifle of contempt for 
this clumsy slow-moving and visible missile. 
Their relief and contempt vanished for ever 
when the fifth bomb fell exactly in the trench, 
burst with a nerve-shattering roar, and filled 
the air with whistling fragments and dense 
choking, blinding smoke and stench. 

Having got their range and angle accurately, 
the Germans proceeded to hurl bomb after 
bomb with the most horrible exactness and per- 
sistency. For two hundred yards up and down 
the trench there was no escape from the blast 
of the bursts. It was no good crouching low, 
or flattening up against the parapet; for the 
bombs dropped straight down and struck out 



"NOTHING TO REPORT" 99 

backwards and sideways and in every direc- 
tion. 

Even the roofed-in dug-outs gave no security. 
A bomb that fell just outside the entrance of 
one dug-out, riddled one man lying inside, and 
blew another who was crouching in the en- 
trance outwards bodily across the trench, stun- 
ning him with the shock and injuring him in a 
score of places. Plenty of the bombs fell short 
of the trench, but too many fell fairly in it. 
When one did so there was only one thing to 
do — to throw oneself violently down in the mud 
of the trench bottom, and wait, heart in mouth, 
for the crash of the explosion. 

The Artillery, on being appealed to, pounded 
the front German trench for an hour, but made 
no impression on the trench-mortar. The 0. C. 
of the Asterisks telephoned the Brigade asking 
what he was to do to stop the torment and des- 
truction, and in reply was told he ought to 
bomb back at the bomb-throwers. But the As- 
terisks had already tried that without any suc- 
cess. The distance was too great for hand 
bombs to reach, and the men appeared to make 
poor shooting with the rifle grenades. 

"Why not try the trench-mortar?" asked 
the Brigade ; to which the harassed Colonel re- 
plied conclusively because he didn't possess 



100 BETWEEN THE LINES 

one, hadn't a bomb for one, and hadn't a man 
or officer who knew how to nse one. 

The Brigade apparently learnt this with sur- 
prise, and replied vaguely that steps would be 
taken, and that an officer and detachment of 
his battalion must receive a course of instruc- 
tion. 

The Colonel replied with spirit that he was 
glad to hear all this, but in the meantime what 
was he to do to prevent his battalion being 
blown piecemeal out of their trenches 1 

It all ended eventually in the arrival of a 
trench-mortar and a pile of bombs from some- 
where and a very youthful and very much an- 
noyed Artillery subaltern from somewhere else. 
The Colonel was most enormously relieved by 
these arrivals, but his high hopes were a good 
deal dashed by the artilleryman. 

That youth explained that he was in effect 
totally ignorant of trench-mortars and their 
ways, that he had been shown the thing a week 
ago, had it explained to him — so far as such a 
rotten toy could be explained — and had fired 
two shots from it. However, he said briskly, if 
off-handedly, he was ready to have a go with it 
and see what he could do. 

The trench-mortar was carried down to the 
forward trench, and on the way down behind 



"NOTHING TO BEPOBT" 101 

it the youngster discoursed to the O.C. of the 
Asterisks on the "awful rot" of a gunner of- 
ficer being chased off on to a job like this — 
any knowledge of gunnery being entirely super- 
fluous and, indeed, wasted on such a kid's toy. 
And the O.C, looking at the trench-mortar be- 
ing prepared, made a mental remark about 
"the mouths of babes" and the wise words 
thereof. 

The weapon is easily described. It was a 
mere cylinder of cast iron, closed at one end, 
open at the other, and with a roomy "touch- 
hole" at the closed end. The carriage con- 
sisted of two uprights on a base, with mortar 
between them and pointing up at an angle of 
about forty-five degrees. 

The charge was little packets of gunpowder 
tied up in paper in measured doses. The bomb 
was a tin-can — an empty jam- tin, mostly — filled 
with a bursting charge and fragments of metal, 
and with an inch or so of the fuse protrud- 
ing. 

The piece was loaded by throwing a few 
packets of powder into the muzzle, poking them 
with a piece of stick to burst the paper, and 
carefully sliding the bomb down on top of the 
charge. A length of fuse was poked into the 
touch-hole and the end lit, sufficient length be- 



102 BETWEEN THE LINES 

ing given to allow the lighter to get round the 
nearest corner before the mortar fired. 

The whole thing was too rubbishy and 
cheaply and roughly made to have been fit for 
use as a "kid's toy," as the subaltern called it. 
To imagine it being used as a weapon of pre- 
cision in a war distinguished above all others 
as one of scientifically perfect weapons and im- 
plements was ridiculous beyond words. 

The Colonel watched the business of loading 
and laying with amazement and consternation. 

"Is it possible to — er — hit anything with 
that?" he asked. 

' ' Well, more or less, ' ' said the youthful sub- 
altern doubtfully. "There's a certain amount 
of luck about it, I believe." 

1 ' But why on earth, ' ' said the Colonel, begin- 
ning to wax indignant, "do they send such a 
museum relic here to fight a reasonably accur- 
ate and decidedly destructive mortar?" 

The subaltern chuckled. 

"That's not any museum antique," he said. 
"That's a Mortar, Trench, Mark Something or 
other — the latest, the most modern weapon of 
the kind in the British Army. It was made, I 
believe, in the Royal Arsenal, and it is still be- 
ing made and issued for use in the field — the 
Engineers collecting the empty jam-pots and 



" NOTHING TO REPORT" 103 

converting them to bombs. They've only had 

four or five months, y'see, to evolve a look 

out, sir! Here's one of theirs!" 

The resulting explosion flung a good deal of 
mud over the parapet on to the Colonel and 
the subaltern, and raised the youth to wrath. 

"Beasts!" he said angrily, and poked a 
length of fuse in the touch-hole. "Get away 
round the traverse ! " he ordered the mob near 
him. "And you'd better go, too, sir — as I will 
when I've touched her off. Y'see, she's just as 
liable to explode as not, and, if she does, she'd 
make more mess in this trench than I can ever 
hope she will in a German one." 

The Colonel retired round the nearest tra- 
verse, and next moment the lieutenant plunged 
round after him just as the mortar went off 
with a resounding bang. Every man in the 
trench watched the bomb rise, twirling and 
twisting, and fall again, turning end over end 
towards the German trench. 

At about the moment he judged it should 
burst, the lieutenant poked his head up over 
the parapet, but bobbed down hurriedly as a 
couple of bullets sang past his ear. 

"Pretty nippy lot across there!" he said. 
"I must find a loophole to observe from. And 
p'r'aps you'd tell some of your people to keep 



104 BETWEEN THE LINES 

up a brisk fire on that parapet to stop 'em 
aiming too easy at me. Now we'll try an- 
other." 

At the next bang from the opposite trench 
he risked another quick peep over and this 
time ducked down with an exclamation of 
delight. 

"I've spotted him," he said. "Just caught 
the haze of his smoke. Down the trench about 
fifty yards. So we'll try trail-left a piece — 
or would if this old drain-pipe had a trail." 

He relayed his mortar carefully, and fired 
again. Having no sights or arrangement what- 
ever for laying beyond a general look over the 
line of its barrel and a pinch more or less of 
powder in the charge, it can only be called a 
piece of astounding good luck that the jam-pot 
bomb fell almost fairly on the top of the Ger- 
man mortar. There was a most satisfying up- 
roar and eddying volume of smoke and erup- 
tion of earth, and the lieutenant stared through 
a loophole dumfounded with delight. 

"I'll swear," he said, "that our old plum 
and apple pot never made a burst that big. I 
do believe it must have flopped down on the 
other fellow and blown up one or two of his 
bombs same time. I say, isn't that the most 
gorgeous good luck? Well, good enough to go 



"NOTHING TO REPORT" 105 

on with. We'll have a chance for some peace- 
ful practice now." 

Apparently, since the other mortar ceased 
to fire, it must have been put out of action, and 
the lieutenant spent a useful hour pot-shotting 
at the other trench. 

The shooting was, to say the least, erratic. 
With apparently the same charge and the same 
tilt on the mortar, one bomb would drop yards 
short and another yards over. If one in three 
went within three yards of the trench, if one 
in six fell in the trench, it was, according to 
the lieutenant, a high average, and as much as 
any man had a right to expect. But at the end 
of the hour, the Asterisks, who had been hugely 
enjoying the performance, and particularly the 
cessation of German bombs, were horrified to 
hear a double report from the German trench, 
and to see two dark blobs fall twinkling from 
the sky. 

The following hour was a nightmare. Their 
trench-mortar was completely out-shot. Those 
fiendish bombs rained down one after the other 
along the trench, burst in devastating circles of 
flame and smoke and whirling metal here, there, 
and everywhere. 

The lieutenant replied gallantly. A dozen 
times he had to shift position, because he was 



106 BETWEEN THE LINES 

obviously located, and was being deliberately- 
bombarded. 

But at last the gunner officer bad to retire 
from the contest. His mortar showed distinct 
signs of going to pieces — the muzzle-end having 
begun to split and crack, and the breech-end 
swelling in a dangerous-looking bulge. 

"Look at her," said the lieutenant disgust- 
edly. "Look at her opening out an' unfolding 
herself like a split-lipped ox-eyed daisy. Any- 
how, this is my last bomb, so the performance 
must close down till we get some more jam- 
pots loaded up." 

The enemy mortars were evidently of better 
make, for they continued to bombard the suf- 
fering Asterisks for another full hour. They 
did a fair amount of damage to the trench and 
parapet, and the Germans seized the oppor- 
tunity of the Asterisks' attempted repairs to 
put in some maxim practice and a few rounds 
of shrapnel. 

Altogether, the 7th King's Own Asterisks 
had a lively twenty-four hours of it, and their 
casualties were heavy, far beyond the average 
of an ordinary day's trench work. Forty-seven 
they totalled in all — nine killed and thirty- 
six wounded. 

They were relieved that night, this short 



" NOTHING TO REPORT" 107 

spell being designed as a sort of introduction or 
breaking in or blooding to the game. 

Taking it all around, the Asterisks were fully 
pleased with themselves. Their Colonel had 
complimented them on their behaviour, and 
they spent the next few days back in the re- 
serve, speculating on what the papers would 
say about them. The optimists were positive 
they would have a full column at least. 

"We beat off an attack," they said. 
1 'There's sure to be a bit in about that. And 
look at the way we were shelled, and our Artil- 
lery shelled back. There was a pretty fair 
imitation of a first-class battle for a bit, and 
most likely there would have been one if we 
hadn't scuppered that attack. And don't for- 
get the bombing we stuck out — and the casual- 
ties. Doesn 't every one tell us they were extra 
heavy? And I believe we are about the first 
Terrier lot to be in a heavy "do" in the for- 
ward trenches. You see — it'll be a column at 
least, and may be two." 

The pessimists declared that two or three 
jDaragraphs were all they could expect, on ac- 
count of the silly fashion of not publishing de- 
tails of engagements. ' ' And whatever mention 
we do get," they said, "won't say a word about 
the K.O.A. It'll just be a 'battalion,' or 



108 BETWEEN THE LINES 

maybe 'a Territorial battalion,' and no more." 
"Anyway," said the optimists, "we'll be able 
to write home to our people and our pals, and 
tell them it was us, though the despatches don't 
mention us by name." 

But optimists and pessimists alike grabbed 
the papers that came to hand each day, and 
searched eagerly for the Eye-witness' reports, 
or the official despatch or communique. At 
last there reached them the paper with the 
communique dated the day after their day in 
the trenches. They stared at it, and then hur- 
ried over the other pages, turned back, and 
examined them carefully one by one. There 
were columns and columns about a strike and 
other purely domestic matters at home, but not 
a word about the 7th Kings Own Asterisks 
(Territorial), not a word about their nine dead 
and thirty-six wounded — not a word, and, more 
than that, barely a word about the Army, or 
the Front, or the "War. 

"There might be no bloomin' war at all to 
look at this paper," said one in disgust. 
"There's plenty about speeding-up the fac- 
tories (an' it's about time they speeded up 
someone to make something better 'n that drain 
pipe or jam-pot bomb we saw), plenty about 
those loafin' swine at home, but not a bloomin' 



"NOTHING TO REPORT" 109 

word about us 'ere. It makes me fair sick." 

"P'raps there wasn't time to get it in," sug- 
gested one of the most persistent optimists. 
"P'raps they'll have it in to-morrow." 

"P'raps," said the disgusted one contempt- 
uously, "an' p'raps not. Look at the date of 
that despatch. Isn't that for the day we was 
in the thick of it? An' look what it says. Don't 
that make you sick?" 

And in truth it did make them ' ' sick. ' ' For 
their night and day of fighting — their defeat 
of an attack, their suffering under shell, bullet, 
and bomb, their nine killed and their thirty-six 
wounded — were all ignored and passed by. 

The despatch for that day said simply: "On 
the Western Front there is nothing to report. 
All remains quiet." 



THE PEOMISE OF SPRING 

"Only when the fields and roads are suffi- 
ciently dry will the favourable moment have 
come for an advance." — Extract from Official 
Despatch. 

It is Sunday, and the regiment marching out 
towards the firing line and its turn of duty in 
the trenches meets on the road every now and 
then a peasant woman on her way to church. 
Some of the women are young and pretty, some 
old and wrinkled and worn ; they walk alone or 
in couples or threes, but all alike are dressed in 
black, and all alike tramp slowly, dully, without 
spring to their step. Over them the sun shines 
in a blue sky, round them the birds sing and the 
trees and fields spread green and fresh; the 
flush of healthy spring is on the countryside, 
the promise of warm, full-blooded summer 
pulses in the air. But there is no hint of spring 
or summer in the sad-eyed faces or the list- 
less, slow movements of the women. It is a 
full dozen miles to the firing line, and to eye 
or ear, unless one knows where and how to look 

110 



THE PEOMISE OF SPRING 111 

and listen, there is no sign of anything but 
peace and pleasant life in the surroundings. 
But these black-clad women do know — know 
that the cool green clump of trees over on the 
hill-side hides a roofless ruin with fire-black- 
ened walls; that the church spire that for all 
their lives they had seen out there over the 
sky-line is no longer visible because it lies shell- 
smitten to a tumbled heap of brick and stone 
and mortar; that the glint of white wood and 
spot of scarlet yonder in the field is the rough 
wooden cross with a kepi on top marking the 
grave of a soldier of France ; that down in the 
hollow just out of sight are over a score of 
those cap-crowned crosses; that a broad belt 
of those graves runs unbroken across this sun- 
lit face of France. They know, too, that those 
dull booms that travel faintly to the ear are 
telling plain of more graves and of more women 
that will wear black. It is little wonder that 
there are few smiles to be seen on the faces of 
these women by the wayside. They have seen 
and heard the red-wrath of war, not in the pic- 
tures of the illustrated papers, not in the 
cinema shows, not even by the word-of-mouth 
tales of chance men who have been in it ; but at 
first-hand, with their own eyes and ears, in the 
leaping flames of burning homes, in the puffing 



112 BETWEEN THE LINES 

white clouds of the shrapnel, the black spout- 
ing smoke of the high-explosive, in the deafen- 
ing thunder of the guns, the yelling shells, the 
crash of falling walls, the groans of wounded 
men, the screams of frightened children. Some 
of them may have seen the shattered hulks of 
men borne past on the sagging stretchers; all 
of them have seen the laden ambulance wagons 
and motors crawling slowly back to the hos- 
pitals. 

And of these women you do not say, as you 
would of our women at home, that they may 
perhaps have friend or relation, a son, a 
brother, a husband, a lover, at the front. You 
say with certainty they have one or other of 
these, and may have all, that every man they 
know, of an age between, say, eighteen and 
forty, is serving his country in the field or in 
the workshops — and mostly in the field — if so 
be they are still alive to serve. 

The men in the marching khaki regiment 
know all these things, and there are respect and 
sympathy in the glances and the greetings that 
pass from them to the women. "They're good 
plucked 'uns," they tell each other, and wonder 
how our women at home would shape at this 
game, and whether they would go on living in 
a house that was next door to one blown to 



THE PEOMISE OF SPRING 113 

pieces by a shell yesterday, and keep on work- 
ing in fields where hardly a day passed with- 
out a shell screaming overhead, whether they'd 
still go about their work as best they could for 
six days a week and then to church on Sunday. 

Two women, one young and lissom, the other 
bent and frail and clinging with her old arm 
to the erect figure beside her, stand aside close 
to the ditch and watch the regiment tramp by. 
" Cheer up, mother," one man calls. ' 'We're 
goin' to shift the Boshies out for you," and 
"Bong jewer," says another, waving his hand. 
Another pulls a sprig of lilac from his cap and 
thrusts it out as he passes. "Souvenir!" he 
says, lightly, and the young woman catches the 
blossom and draws herself up with her eyes 
sparkling and calls, ' ' Bonne chance, Messieurs. 
Goo-o-o-d lock." She repeats the words over 
and over while the regiment passes, and the 
men answer, "Bong chawnse" and "Good 
luck," and such scraps of French as they 
know — or think they know. The women stand 
in the sunshine and watch them long after they 
have passed, and then turn slowly and move 
on to their church and their prayers. 

The regiment tramps on. It moves with the 
assured stamp and swing of men who know 
themselves and know their game, and have con- 



114 BETWEEN THE LINES 

fidence in their strength and fitness. Their 
clothes are faded and weather-stained, their 
belts and straps and equipments chafed and 
worn, the woodwork of their rifles smooth of 
butt and shiny of hand-grip from much using 
and cleaning. Their faces bronzed and weather- 
beaten, and with a dew of perspiration just 
damping their foreheads — where men less fit 
would be streaming sweat — are full-cheeked 
and glowing with health, and cheek and chin 
razored clean and smooth as a guardsman's 
going on church parade. The whole regiment 
looks fresh and well set-up and clean-cut, satis- 
fied with the day and not bothering about the 
morrow, magnificently strong and healthy, 
carelessly content and happy, not anxious to go 
out of its way to find a fight, but impossible to 
move aside from its way by the fight that does 
find it — all of which is to say it looks exactly 
what it is, a British regiment of the regular 
Line, war-hardened by eight or nine months' 
fighting moving up from a four days' rest 
back into the firing line. 

It is fairly early in the day, and the sun, 
although it is bright enough to bring out the 
full colour of the green grass and trees, the 
yellow laburnum, and the purple lilac, is not 
hot enough to make marching uncomfortable. 



THE PROMISE OF SPRING 115 

The road, a main route between two towns, is 
paved with flat cobbles abont the size of large 
bricks, and bordered mile after mile with tall 
poplars. There are farms and hamlets and vil- 
lages strung close along the road, and round 
and about all these houses are women and chil- 
dren, and many men in khaki, a few dogs, some 
pigs perhaps, and near the farms plenty of 
poultry. By most of the farms, too, are or- 
chards and fruit-trees in blossom; and in some 
of these lines of horses are ranked or wagons 
are parked, sheltered by the trees from aerial 
observation. For all this, it must be remem- 
bered, is far enough back from the firing line 
to be beyond the reach of any but the longest- 
range guns — guns so big that they are not likely 
to waste some tons of shells on the off-chance 
of hitting an encampment and disabling few or 
many horses or wagons. 

Towards noon the regiment swings off the 
road and halts in a large orchard; rifles are 
stood aside, equipments and packs are thrown 
off, tunics unbuttoned and flung open or off, 
and the men drop with puffing sighs of satisfac- 
tion on the springy turf under the shade of the 
fruit-trees. The "travelling cookers" rumble 
up and huge cauldrons of stew and potatoes 
are slung off, carried to the different com- 



116 BETWEEN THE LINES 

parries, and served steaming hot to the hun- 
gry men. A boon among boons these same 
cookers, less so perhaps now that the warmer 
weather is here, but a blessing beyond price in 
the bitter cold and constant wet of the past win- 
ter, when a hot meal served without waiting 
kept heart in many men and even life itself 
in some. Their fires were lit before the regi- 
ment broke camp this morning, and the din- 
ners have been jolting over the long miles since 
sun-up, cooking as comfortably and well as 
they would in the best-appointed camp or bar- 
rack cook-house. 

The men eat mightily, then light their pipes 
and cigarettes and loll at their ease. The trees 
are masses of clustering pink and white blos- 
som, the grass is carpeted thick with the white 
of fallen petals and splashed with sunlight and 
shade. A few slow-moving clouds drift lazily 
across the blue sky, the big, fat bees drone their 
sleepy song amongst the blossoms, the birds 
rustle and twitter amongst the leaves and flit 
from bough to bough. It would be hard to find 
a more peaceful picture in any country steeped 
in the most profound peace. There is not one 
jarring note — until the "honk, honk" of a 
motor is followed by the breathless, panting 
whirr of the engine, and a big car flashes down 



THE PKOMISE OF SPRING 117 

the road and past, travelling at the topmost 
of its top speed. There is just time to glimpse 
the khaki hood and the thick scarlet cross blaz- 
ing on a white circle, and the car is gone. 
Empty as it is, it is moving fast, and with luck 
and a clear road it will be well inside the dan- 
ger zone at the back door of the trenches in 
less than twenty minutes. In half an hour per- 
haps it will have picked up its full load, and be 
sliding back smoothly and gently down the 
cobbled road, swinging carefully now to this 
side to avoid some scattered bricks, now to that 
to dodge a shell-hole patched with gravel, driven 
down as tenderly and gently as it was driven up 
fiercely and recklessly. 

Presently there are a few quiet orders, a few 
minutes' stir and movement, a shifting to and 
fro of khaki against the green and pink and 
white . . . and the companies have fallen in 
and stand in straight rulered ranks. A pause, 
a sharp order or two, and the quick staccato 
of "numbering off" ripples swiftly down the 
lines; another pause, another order, the long 
ranks blur and melt, harden and halt instantly 
in a new shape; and evenly and steadily the 
ranked fours swing off, turn out into the road, 
and go tramping down between the poplars. 
There has been no flurry, no hustle, no con- 



118 BETWEEN THE LINES 

fusion. The whole thing has moved with the 
smoothness and precision and effortless ease 
of a properly adjusted, well-oiled machine — 
which, after all, is just what the regiment is. 
The pace is apparently leisurely, or even lazy, 
but it eats up the miles amazingly, and it can 
be kept up with the shortest of halts from dawn 
to dusk. 

As the miles unwind behind the regiment the 
character of the country begins to change. 
There are fewer women and children to be seen 
now; there are more roofless buildings, more 
house-fronts gaping doorless and windowless, 
more walls with ragged rents, and tumbled 
heaps of brick lying under the yawning black 
holes. But the grass is still green, and the 
trees thick with foliage, the fields neatly 
ploughed and tilled and cultivated, with here 
and there a staring notice planted on the edge 
of a field, where the long, straight drills are 
sprinkled with budding green — "Crops sown. 
Do not walk here." Altogether there is little 
sign of the heavy hand of war upon the coun- 
try, and such signs as there are remain unob- 
trusive and wrapped up in springing verdure 
and bloom and blossom. Even the trapping of 
war, the fighting machine itself, wears a holi- 
day or — at most — an Easter-peace-manoeuvre 



THE PROMISE OF SPRING 119 

appearance. A heavy battery has its guns so 
carefully concealed, so bowered in green, that 
it is only the presence of the lounging gunners 
and close, searching looks that reveal a few 
inches of muzzle peering out towards the hill 
crest in front. Scattered about behind the 
guns, covered with beautiful green turf, shad- 
owed by growing trees, are the dwelling-places 
of the gunners, deep "dug-outs," with no vis- 
ible sign of their existence except the square, 
black hole of the doorway. Out in the open a 
man sits with a pair of field-glasses, sweeping 
the sky. He is the aeroplane look-out, and at 
the first sign of a distant speck in the sky or 
the drone of an engine he blows shrilly on his 
whistle; every man dives to earth or under 
cover, and remains motionless until the whistle 
signals all clear again. An enemy aeroplane 
might drop to within pistol shot and search for 
an hour without finding a sign of the battery. 
"When the regiment swerves off the main 
road and moves down a winding side-track over 
open fields, past tree-encircled farms, and along 
by thick-leaved hedges, it passes more of these 
Jack-in-the-Green concealed batteries. All wear 
the same look of happy and indolent ease. 
Near one is a stream, and the gunners are bath- 
ing in an artificially made pool, plunging and 



120 BETWEEN THE LINES 

splashing in showers of glistening drops. They 
are like school boys at a picnic. It seems ut- 
terly ridiculous to think that they are grim 
fighting men whose business in life for months 
past and for months to come is to kill and kill, 
and to be killed themselves if such is the for- 
tune of war. Another battery of field artillery 
passes on the road. But even here, shorn of 
their concealing greenery, in all the bare work- 
ing- and-ready-for-business apparel of "march- 
ing order," there is little to suggest real war. 
Drivers and gunners are spruce and neat and 
clean, the horses are sleek and well fed and 
groomed till their skins shine like satin in the 
sun, the harness is polished and speckless, bits 
and stirrup-irons and chains and all the scraps 
of steel and brass twinkle and wink in bright 
and shining splendour. The ropes of the traces 
— the last touch of pride in perfection this, 
surely — are scrubbed and whitened. The whole 
battery is as spick and span, as complete and 
immaculate, as if it were waiting to walk into 
the arena at the Naval and Military Tourna- 
ment. Such scrupulous perfection on active 
service sounds perhaps unnecessary or even ex- 
travagant. But the teams, remember, have 
been for weeks past luxuriating in comfortable 
ease miles back in their " wagon-line " billets, 



THE PEOMISE OF SPRING 121 

where the horses have done nothing for days 
on end but feed and grow fat, and the drivers 
nothing but clean up and look after their teams 
and harness. If the guns up in the firing line 
had to shift position it has meant no more to 
the teams than a break of the monotony for a 
day or two, a night or two's marching, and a 
return to the rear. 

It is afternoon now, and the regiment is draw- 
ing near to the trenches. The slanting sun 
begins to throw long shadows from the poplars. 
The open fields are covered with tall grass and 
hay that moves in long, slow, undulating waves 
under the gentle breeze that is rising. The slop- 
ing light falling on them gives the waves an 
extraordinary resemblance to the gentle swell 
on a summer sea. Here and there the fields 
are splashed with broad bands of vivid colour — 
the blazing scarlet of poppies, the glowing 
cloth-of-gold of yellow mustard, the rich, deep, 
splendid blue of corn-flowers. 

For one or two miles past the track has been 
plainly marked by sign-posts bearing directions 
to the various trenches and their entrances. 
Now, at a parting of the main track, a group of 
"guides" — men from the regiment being re- 
lieved from the trenches — wait the incoming 
regiment. Company by company, platoon by 



122 BETWEEN THE LINES 

platoon, the regiment moves off to the ap- 
pointed places, and by company and platoon 
the outcoming regiment gathers up its belong- 
ings and moves out. In most parts of the fir- 
ing line these changes would only be made after 
dark. But this section bears the reputation of 
being a "peaceful" one, the Germans opposite 
of being "tame," so the reliefs are made in 
daytime, more or less in safety. There has 
been no serious fighting here for months. Con- 
stant sniping and bickering between the for- 
ward firing trenches has, of course, always gone 
on, but there has been no attack one way or 
the other, little shell-fire, and few aeroplanes 
over. 

The companies that ' ' take over ' ' the support 
trenches get varied instructions and advice 
about tending the plants and flowers round the 
dug-outs, and watering the mustard-and-cress 
box. They absorb the advice, strip their accou- 
trements and tunics, roll up their shirt-sleeves, 
and open the throats, fish out soap and towels 
from their packs, and proceed to the pump to 
lather and wash copiously. The companies for 
the forward trench march down interminable 
communication trenches, distribute themselves 
along the parapet, and also absorb advice from 
the outgoing tenants — advice of the positions 



THE PROMISE OF SPRING 123 

of enemy snipers, the hours when activity and 
when peace may be expected, the specially " un- 
healthy" spots where a sniper's bullet or a 
bomb must be watched for, the angles and loop- 
holes that give the best look-out. The trenches 
are deep and well-made, the parapets solidly 
constructed. For four days or six, or as many 
as the regiment remains " in, " the range of the 
men's vision will be the walls of the trench, 
the piled sandbags, the inside of their dug-outs, 
and a view (taken in peeps through a loophole 
or reflected in a periscope mirror) of about 
fifty to a hundred yards of ''neutral ground" 
and the German parapet beyond. The neutral 
ground is covered with a jungle of coarse grass, 
edged on both sides with a tangle of barbed 
wire. 

Close to the German parapet are a few black, 
huddled heaps — dead Germans, shot down while 
out in a working party on the wire at night, 
and left there to rot, and some killed in their 
own trench and tumbled out over the parapet 
by their own comrades. The drowsy silence is 
broken at long intervals by a rifle shot; a lark 
pours out a stream of joyful thrilling song. 

A mile or two back from the firing line a 
couple of big motor-cars swing over the crest 



124 BETWEEN THE LINES 

of a gentle rise, swoop down into the dip, and 
halt suddenly. A little group of men with scar- 
let staff-bands on their caps and tabs on their 
collars climb out of the cars and move off the 
track into the grass of the hollow. They prod 
sticks at the ground, stamp on it, dig a heel in, 
to test its hardness and dryness. 

The General looks round. "This is about 
as low-lying a spot as we have on this part of 
front," he says to his Chief of Staff. "If it is 
dry enough here it must be dry enough every- 
where else." 

The Chief assents, and for a space the group 
stands looking round the sunlit fields and up 
at the clear sky. But their thoughts are not 
of the beauties of the peaceful landscape. The 
words of the General are the key to all their 
thoughts. For them the promise of spring is a 
grim and a sinister thing; to them the springy 
green turf carpet on the fields means ground fit 
to bear the weight of teams and guns, dry 
enough to give firm foothold to the ranks of 
infantry charging across the death-trap of the 
neutral ground, where clogging, wet, slippery 
mud adds to the minutes under the hail of fire 
and every minute there in the open means hun- 
dreds of lives lost. The hard, dry road under- 
foot means merely that roads are passable for 



THE PEOMISE OF SPRING 125 

heavy guns and transport. The thick green 
foliage of the trees is so much cover for guns 
and the moving of troops and transport under 
concealment from air observation; the clear, 
blue sky promises the continuance of fine 
weather, the final release from the inactivity of 
the trenches. To these men the "Promise of 
Spring" is the promise of the crescendo of bat- 
tle and slaughter. 

The General and his Staff are standing in 
the middle of a wide patch of poppies, spread 
out in a bright scarlet that matches exactly the 
red splashes on the brows and throats of the 
group. They move slowly back towards the 
cars, and as they walk the red ripples and 
swirls against their boots and about their 
knees. 

One might imagine them wading knee-deep 
in a river of blood. 



THE ADVANCE 

"The attach has resulted in our line being 
advanced from one to two hundred yards along 
a front of over one thousand yards." — Of- 
ficial Despatch. 

Down to the rawest hand in the latest-joined 
drafts, everyone knew for a week before the 
attack commenced that " something was on," 
and for twenty-four hours before that the 
" something" was a move of some importance, 
no mere affair of a battalion or two, or even of 
brigades, but of divisions and corps and 
armies. There had been vague stirrings in the 
regiments far behind the firing line "in rest," 
refittings and completings of kits, reissuing of 
worn equipments, and a most ominous anxiety 
that each man was duly equipped with an 
"identity disc," the tell-tale little badge that 
hangs always round the neck of a man on ac- 
tive service and that bears the word of who 
he is when he is brought in wounded — who he 
was when brought in dead. The old hands 
judged all the signs correctly and summed 

126 



THE ADVANCE 127 

them up in a sentence, ' ' Being fattened for the 
slaughter," and were in no degree surprised 
when the sudden order came to move. Those 
furthest back moved up the first stages by day- 
light, but when they came within reach of the 
rumbling guns they were halted and biv- 
ouacked to wait for night to cloak their move- 
ments from the prying eyes of the enemy 
'planes. The enemy might have — probably had 
— an inkling of the coming attack; but they 
might not know exactly the portion of front 
selected for the heaviest pressure, and this 
must be kept secret till the last possible mo- 
ment. So the final filing up into the forward 
and support trenches was done by night, and 
was so complete by daylight that no sign of 
unwonted movement could be discerned from 
the enemy trenches and observing stations 
when day broke. 

It was a beautiful morning — soft and mildly 
warm and sunny, with just a slight haze hang- 
ing low to tone the growing light, and, inci- 
dentally, to delay the opening of fire from the 
guns. Anyone standing midway between the 
forward firing trenches might have looked in 
vain for living sign of the massed hordes wait- 
ing the word to be at each other's throats. 
Looking forward from behind the British lines, 



128 BETWEEN THE LINES 

it could be seen that the trenches and parapets 
were packed with men ; but no man showed head 
over parapet, and, seen from the enemy's side, 
the parapets presented blank, lifeless walls, the 
trenches gave no glimpse of life. All the bustle 
and movement of the night before was finished. 
At midnight every road and track leading to 
the forward trenches had been brimming with 
men, with regiments tramping slowly or squat- 
ting stolidly by the roadside, smoking much and 
talking little, had been crawling with transport, 
with ammunition carts, and ambulances and 
stretcher-parties, and sappers heavily laden 
with sandbags and rolls of barbed wire. The 
trenches — support, communication, and firing — 
had trickled with creeping rivulets of khaki 
caps and been a-bristle with bobbing rifle-bar- 
rels. Further back amongst the lines of guns 
the last loads of ammunition were rumbling up 
to the batteries, the last shells required to 
" complete establishment" — and overcomplete 
it — were being stowed in safe proximity to the 
guns. At midnight there were scores of thou- 
sands of men and animals busily at work with 
preparations for the slaughter-pen of the mor- 
row. Before midnight came again the bustle 
would be renewed, and the circling ripples of 
activity would be spreading and widening from 



THE ADVANCE 129 

the central splash of the battle front till the 
last waves washed back to Berlin and London, 
brimming the hospitals and swirling through 
the munition factories. But now at daybreak 
the battlefield was steeped in brooding calm. 
Across the open space of the neutral ground a 
few trench periscopes peered anxiously for any 
sign of movement, and saw none ; the batteries ' 
"forward observing officers," tucked away in 
carefully chosen and hidden look-outs, fidgeted 
with wrist- watches and field-glasses, and passed 
back by telephone continual messages about 
the strength of the growing light and the lift- 
ing haze. An aeroplane droned high overhead, 
and an " Archibald" (anti-aircraft gun) or 
two began to pattern the sky about it with a 
trail of fleecy white smoke-puffs. The 'plane 
sailed on and out of sight, the smoke-puffs and 
the wheezy barks of "Archibald" receding af- 
ter it. Another period of silence followed. It 
was broken by a faint report like the sound of 
a far-off door being slammed, and almost at the 
same instant there came to the ear the faint 
thin whistle of an approaching shell. The whis- 
tle rose to a rush and a roar that cut off 
abruptly in a thunderous bang. The shell 
pitched harmlessly on the open ground between 
the forward and support trenches. Again 



130 BETWEEN THE LINES 

came that faint "slam," this time repeated by 
four, and the "bouquet" of four shells crumped 
down almost on top of the support line. The 
four crashes might have been a signal to the 
British guns. About a dozen reports thudded 
out quickly and separately, and then in one ter- 
rific blast of sound the whole line broke out 
in heavy fire. The infantry in the trenches 
could distinguish the quick-following bangs of 
the guns directly in line behind them, could sep- 
arate the vicious swish and rush of the shells 
passing immediately over their heads. Apart 
from these, the reports blent in one long throb- 
bing pulse of noise, an indescribable medley of 
moanings, shrieks, and whistling in the air rent 
by the passing shells. So ear-filling and con- 
fused was the clamour that the first sharp, 
sudden bursts of the enemy shells over our 
trenches were taken by the infantry for their 
own artillery's shells falling short; but a very 
few moments proved plainly enough that the 
enemy were replying vigorously to our fire. 
They had the ranges well marked, too, and huge 
rents began to show in our parapets, strings of 
casualties began to trickle back to the dressing 
stations in a stream that was to flow steady and 
unbroken for many days and nights. But the 
enemy defences showed more and quicker signs 



THE ADVANCE 131 

of damage, especially at the main points, where 
the massed guns were busy breaching the se- 
lected spots. Here the lighter guns were pour- 
ing a hurricane of shrapnel on the dense thick- 
ets of barbed-wire entanglements piled in loose 
loops and coils, strung in a criss-cross network 
between pegs and stakes along the edge of the 
neutral ground ; the howitzers and heavies were 
pounding and hammering at the parapets and 
the communication trenches beyond. 

For half an hour the appalling uproar con- 
tinued, the solid earth shook to the roar of the 
guns and the crashing of the shells. By the 
end of that time both fronts to a depth of hun- 
dreds of yards were shrouded in a slow-drift- 
ing haze of smoke and dust, through which the 
flashes of the bursting shells blazed in quick 
glares of vivid light, and the spots of their fall- 
ing were marked by gushes of smoke and up- 
flung billowing clouds of thick dust. So far 
the noise was only and all of guns and shell 
fire, but now from far out on one of the flanks 
a new note began to weave itself into the up- 
roar — the sharper crackle and clatter of rifle 
and machine-gun fire. 

Along the line of front marked for the main 
assault the guns suddenly lifted their fire and 
commenced to pour it down further back, al- 



132 BETWEEN THE LINES 

though a number of the lighter guns continued 
to sweep the front parapet with gusts of shrap- 
nel. And then suddenly it could be seen that 
the front British trench was alive and astir. 
The infantry, who had been crouched and prone 
in the shelter of their trenches, rose suddenly 
and began to clamber over the parapets into 
the open and make their way out through the 
maze of their own entanglements. Instantly 
the parapet opposite began to crackle with rifle 
fire and to beat out a steady tattoo from the 
hammering machine-guns. The bullets hissed 
and spat across the open and hailed upon the 
opposite parapet. Scores, hundreds of men fell 
before they could clear the entanglements to 
form up in the open, dropped as they climbed 
the parapet, or even as they stood up and raised 
a head above it. But the mass poured out, 
shook itself roughly into line, and began to 
run across the open. They ran for the most 
part with shoulders hunched and heads stooped 
as men would run through a heavy rainstorm to 
a near shelter. And as they ran they stumbled 
and fell and picked themselves up and ran 
again — or crumpled up and lay still or squirm- 
ing feebly. As the line swept on doggedly it 
thinned and shredded into broken groups. The 
men dropped under the rifle bullets, singly or 



THE ADVANCE 133 

in twos and threes; the bursting shells tore 
great gaps in the line, snatching a dozen men 
at a mouthful ; here and there, where it ran into 
the effective sweep of a maxim, the line simply- 
withered and dropped and stayed still in a 
string of huddled heaps amongst and on which 
the bullets continued to drum and thud. The 
open ground was a full hundred yards across 
at the widest point where the main attack was 
delivering. Fifty yards across, the battalion 
assaulting was no longer a line, but a scat- 
tered series of groups like beads on a broken 
string; sixty yards across and the groups had 
dwindled to single men and couples with des- 
perately long intervals between ; seventy yards, 
and there were no more than odd occasional 
men, with one little bunch near the centre that 
had by some extraordinary chance escaped the 
sleet of bullets ; at eighty yards a sudden swirl 
of lead caught this last group — and the line at 
last was gone, wiped out, the open was swept 
clear of those dogged runners. The open 
ground was dotted thick with men, men lying 
prone and still, men crawling on hands and 
knees, men dragging themselves slowly and 
painfully with trailing, useless legs, men limp- 
ing, hobbling, staggering, in a desperate en- 
deavour to get back to their parapet and escape 



134 BETWEEN THE LINES 

the bullets and shrapnel that still stormed down 
upon them. The British gunners dropped 
their ranges again, and a deluge of shells and 
shrapnel burst crashing and whistling upon the 
enemy's front parapet. The rifle fire slack- 
ened and almost died, and the last survivors of 
the charge had such chance as was left by the 
enemy's shells to reach the shelter of their 
trench. Groups of stretcher-bearers leaped 
out over the parapet and ran to pick up the 
wounded, and hard on their heels another line 
of infantry swarmed out and formed up for 
another attack. As they went forward at a 
run the roar of rifles and machine-guns swelled 
again, and the hail of bullets began to sweep 
across to meet them. Into the forward trench 
they had vacated, the stream of another battal- 
ion poured, and had commenced to climb out in 
their turn before the advancing line was much 
more than half-way across. This time the cas- 
ualties, although appallingly heavy, were not 
so hopelessly severe as in the first charge, prob- 
ably because a salient of the enemy trench to 
a flank had been reached by a battalion further 
along, and the devastating enfilading fire of 
rifles and machine-guns cut off. This time the 
broken remnants of the line reached the barbed 
wires, gathered in little knots as the individual 



THE ADVANCE 135 

men ran up and down along the face of the 
entanglements looking for the lanes cnt clearest 
by the sweeping shrapnel, streamed through 
with men still falling at every step, reached the 
parapet and leaped over and down. The guns 
had held their fire on the trench till the last 
possible moment, and now they lifted again and 
sought to drop across the further lines and the 
communication trenches a shrapnel ''curtain" 
through which no reinforcements could pass 
and live. The following battalion came surging 
across, losing heavily, but still bearing weight 
enough to tell when at last they poured in over 
the parapet. 

The neutral ground, the deadly open and 
exposed space, was won. It had been crossed 
at other points, and now it only remained to 
see if the hold could be maintained and 
strengthened and extended. 

The fighting fell to a new phase — the work 
of the short-arm bayonet thrust and the 
bomb-throwers. In the gaps between the points 
where the trench was taken the enemy fought 
with the desperation of trapped rats. The 
trench had to be taken traverse by traverse. 
The bombers lobbed their missiles over into the 
traverse ahead of them in showers, and im- 
mediately the explosions crashed out, swung 



136 BETWEEN THE LINES 

round the corner with a rush to be met in turn 
with bullets or bursting bombs. Sometimes a 
space of two or three traverses was blasted 
bare of life and rendered untenable for long 
minutes on end by a constant succession of 
grenades and bombs. In places, the men of 
one side or the other leaped up out of the 
trench, risking the bullets that sleeted across 
the level ground, and emptied a clip of cart- 
ridges or hurled half a dozen grenades down 
into the trench further along. But for the most 
part the fight raged below ground-level, at 
times even below the level of the trench floor, 
where a handful of men held out in a deep dug- 
out. If the entrance could be reached, a few 
bombs speedily settled the affair ; but where the 
defenders had hastily blocked themselves in 
with a barricade of sandbags or planks, so that 
grenades could not be pitched in, there was 
nothing left to do but crowd in against the rifle 
muzzles that poked out and spurted bullets 
from the openings, tear down the defences, and 
so come at the defenders. And all the time the 
captured trench was pelted by shells — high- 
explosive and shrapnel. At the entrances of 
the communication trenches that led back to 
the support trenches the fiercest fighting raged 
continually, with men struggling to block the 



THE ADVANCE 137 

path with sandbags and others striving to tear 
them down, while on both sides their fellows 
fought over them with bayonet and butt. In 
more than one such place the barricade was at 
last built by the heap of the dead who had 
fought for possession ; in others, crude barriers 
of earth and sandbags were piled up and fought 
across and pulled down and built up again a 
dozen times. 

In the middle of the ferocious individual 
hand-to-hand fighting a counter-attack was 
launched against the captured trench. A swarm 
of the enemy leaped from the next trench and 
rushed across the twenty or thirty yards of 
open to the captured front line. But the coun- 
ter-attack had been expected. The guns caught 
the attackers as they left their trench and beat 
them down in scores. A line of riflemen had 
been installed under cover of what had been 
the parapet of the enemy front trench, and this 
line broke out in "the mad minute" of rifle 
fire. The shrapnel and the rifles between them 
broke the counter-attack before it had well 
formed. It was cut down in swathes and had 
totally collapsed before it reached half-way to 
the captured trench. But another was hurled 
forward instantly, was up out of the trench 
and streaming across the open before the in- 



138 BETWEEN THE LINES 

fantry had finished re-charging their maga- 
zines. Then the rifles spoke again in rolling 
crashes, the screaming shrapnel pounced again 
on the trench that still erupted hurrying men, 
while from the captured trench itself came hur- 
tling bombs and grenades. Smoke and dust 
leaped and swirled in dense clouds about the 
trenches and the open between them, but 
through the haze the ragged front fringe of the 
attack loomed suddenly and pressed on to the 
very lip of the trench. Beyond that point it 
appeared it could not pass. The British in- 
fantry, cramming fresh cartridge-clips into 
their magazines, poured a fresh cataract of 
lead across the broken parapet into the charg- 
ing ranks, and the ranks shivered and stopped 
and melted away beneath the fire, while the 
remnants broke and fled back to cover. With a 
yell the defenders of a moment before became 
the attackers. They leaped the trench and fell 
with the bayonet on the flying survivors of the 
counter-attack. For the greater part these 
were killed as they fled; but here and there 
groups of them turned at bay, and in a dozen 
places as many fights raged bitterly for a few 
minutes, while the fresh attack pushed on to 
the next trench. A withering fire poured from 
it but could not stop the rush that fought its 



THE ADVANCE 139 

way on and in to the second-line trench. From 
now the front lost connection or cohesion. 
Here and there the attackers broke in on the 
second line, exterminated that portion of the 
defence in its path or was itself exterminated 
there. Where it won footing it spread raging 
to either side along the trench, shooting, stab- 
bing, flinging hand grenades and bearing down 
the defenders by the sheer fnry of the attack. 
The movement spread along the line, and with 
a sudden leap and rush the second line was 
gained along a front of nearly a mile. In parts 
this attack overshot its mark, broke through 
and over the second line and, tearing and hack- 
ing through a network of wire, into the third 
trench. In part the second line still held out; 
and even after it was all completely taken, the 
communication trenches between the first and 
second line were filled with combatants who 
fought on furiously, heedless of whether 
friend or foe held trench to front or rear, in- 
tent only on the business at their own bayonet 
points, to kill the enemy facing them and push 
in and kill the ones behind. Fresh supports 
pressed into the captured positions, and, backed 
by their weight, the attack surged on again in 
a fresh spasm of fury. It secured foothold in 
great sections of the third line, and even, with- 



140 BETWEEN THE LINES 

out waiting to see the whole of it made good, 
attempted to rush the fourth line. At one or 
two points the gallant attempt succeeded, and 
a handful of men hung on desperately for some 
hours, their further advance impossible, their 
retreat, had they attempted it, almost equally 
so, cut off from reinforcements, short of am- 
munition, and entirely without bombs or gre- 
nades. When their ammunition was expended 
they used rifles and cartridges taken from the 
enemy dead in the trench; having no grenades 
they snatched and hurled back on the instant 
any that fell with fuses still burning. They 
waged their unequal fight to the last minute 
and were killed out to the last man. 

The third line was not completely held or 
even taken. One or two loopholed and machine- 
gunned dug-out redoubts, or "keeps," held out 
strenuously, and before they could be reduced 
— entrance being gained at last literally by 
tearing the place down sandbag by sandbag till 
a hole was made and grenade after grenade 
flung in — other parts of the trench had been re- 
captured. The weak point that so often ham- 
pers attack was making itself felt. The bomb- 
ers and "grenadiers" had exhausted the stock 
they carried; fresh supplies were scanty, were 
brought up with difficulty, and distributed to 



THE ADVANCE 141 

the most urgently required places with still 
greater difficulty. The ammunition carriers 
had to cross the open of the old neutral ground, 
the battered first trench, pass along communi- 
cation trenches choked with dead ^and wounded, 
or again cross the open to the second and third 
line. All the time they were under the fire of 
high- explosive shells and had to pass through 
a zone or " barrage" of shrapnel built across 
their path for just this special purpose of de- 
stroying supports and supplies. Our own artil- 
lery were playing exactly the same game behind 
the enemy lines, but in these lines were ample 
stores of cartridges and grenades, bombs, and 
trench-mortars. The third and fourth lines 
were within easy bomb- and grenade-throwing 
distance, and were connected by numerous 
passage-ways. On this front the contest be- 
came a bombing duel, and because the British 
were woefully short of bombs and the enemy 
could throw five to their one, they were once 
again "bombed out" and forced to retire. But 
by now the second trench had been put in some 
state of defence towards its new front, and 
here the British line stayed fast and set its 
teeth and doggedly endured the torment of the 
bombs and the destruction of the pounding 
shells. Without rest or respite they endured 



142 BETWEEN THE LINES 

till night, and on through the night, under the 
glare of flares and the long-drawn punishment 
of the shell fire, until the following day brought 
with the dawn fresh supports for a renewal of 
the struggle. The battered fragments of the 
first attacking battalions were withdrawn, often 
with corporals for company leaders, and lieu- 
tenants or captains commanding battalions 
whose full remaining strength would hardly 
make a company. The battle might only have 
been well begun, but at least, thanks to them 
and to those scattered heaps lying among the 
grass, spread in clumps and circles about the 
yawning shell-holes, buried beneath the broken 
parapets and in the smashed trenches — to them 
and those, and these others passing out with 
haggard, pain-lined faces, shattered limbs, and 
torn bodies on the red, wet stretchers to the 
dressing stations, at least, the battle was well 
begun. The sappers were hard at work in the 
darkness consolidating the captured positions, 
and these would surely now be held firm. What- 
ever was to follow, these first regiments had 
done their share. 

Two lines of trenches were taken; the line 
was advanced — advanced, it is true, a bare one 
or two hundred yards, but with lives poured 
out like water over each foot of the advance, 



THE ADVANCE 143 

with every inch of the ground gained marking 
a well-spring and fountain-head of a river of 
pain, of a suffering beyond all words, of a 
glory above and beyond all suffering. 



A CONVERT TO CONSCRIPTION 

". . . have maintained and consolidated our 
position in the captured trench." — Extract 
from Official Despatch. 

Number nine-two-ought-three-six, Sapper 
Duffy, J., A Section, Southland Company, 
Royal Engineers, had been before the War 
plain Jim Duffy, labourer, and as such had 
been an ardent anti-militarist, anti-conscrip- 
tionist, and anti-everything else his labour lead- 
ers and agitators told him. His anti-militarist 
beliefs were sunk soon after the beginning of 
the War, and there is almost a complete story 
itself in the tale of their sinking, weighted first 
by a girl, who looked ahead no further than 
the pleasure of walking out with a khaki uni- 
form, and finally plunged into the deeps of the 
Army by the gibe of a stauncher anti-militarist 
during a heated argument that, " if he believed 
now in fighting, why didn't he go'n fight him- 
self." But even after his enlistment he re- 
mained true to his beliefs in voluntary service, 
and the account of his conversion to the prin- 

144 



A CONVEET TO CONSCRIPTION 145 

ciples of Conscription — no half-and-half meas- 
ures of "military training" or rifle clubs or 
hybrid arrangements of that sort, but out-and- 
out Conscription — may be more interesting, as 
it certainly is more typical, of the conversion 
of more thousands of members of the Serving 
Forces than will ever be known — until those 
same thousands return to their civilian lives 
and the holding of their civilian votes. 



By nightfall the captured trench — well, it was 
only a courtesy title to call it a trench. Pre- 
vious to the assault, the British guns had 
knocked it about a good deal, bombs and gre- 
nades had helped further to disrupt it in the 
attacks and counter-attacks during the day, and 
finally, after it was captured and held, the en- 
emy had shelled and high-explosived it out of 
any likeness to a real trench. But the infantry 
had clung throughout the day to the ruins, had 
beaten off several strong counter-attacks, and 
in the intervals had done what they could to 
dig themselves more securely in and re-pile 
some heaps of sandbags from the shattered 
parapet on the trench's new front. The cas- 
ualties had been heavy, and since there was 
no passage from the front British trench to the 



146 BETWEEN THE LINES 

captured portion of the German except across 
the open of the "neutral" ground, most of 
the wounded and all the killed had had to re- 
main under such cover as could be found in the 
wrecked trench. The position of the unwound- 
ed was bad enough and unpleasant enough, but 
it was a great deal worse for the wounded. 
A bad wound damages mentally as well as 
physically. The "casualty" is out of the fight, 
has had a first field dressing placed on his 
wound, has been set on one side to be removed 
at the first opportunity to the dressing sta- 
tion and the rear. He can do nothing more to 
protect himself or take such cover as offers. 
He is in the hands of the stretcher-bearers and 
must submit to be moved when and where they 
think fit. And in this case the casualties did 
not even have the satisfaction of knowing that 
every minute that passed meant a minute fur- 
ther from the danger zone, a minute nearer to 
safety and to the doctors, and the hospitals' 
hope of healing. Here they had to lie through- 
out the long day, hearing the shriek of each 
approaching shell, waiting for the crash of its 
fall, wondering each time if this one, the rush 
of its approach rising louder and louder to an 
appalling screech, was going to be the finish — 
a "direct hit." Many of the wounded were 



A CONVERT TO CONSCRIPTION 147 

wounded again, or killed as they lay ; and from 
others the strength and the life had drained 
slowly out before nightfall. But now that dark- 
ness had come the casualties moved out and 
the supports moved in. From what had been 
the German second trench, and on this portion 
of front was now their forward one, lights were 
continually going up and bursts of rifle and 
machine-gun fire were coming; and an occa- 
sional shell still whooped up and burst over 
or behind the captured trench. This meant 
that the men — supports, and food and water 
carriers, and stretcher-bearers — were under a 
dangerous fire even at night in crossing the old 
"neutral ground," and it meant that one of 
the first jobs absolutely necessary to the hold- 
ing of the captured trench was the making of 
a connecting path more or less safe for moving 
men, ammunition, and food by night or day. 

This, then, was the position of affairs when 
a section of the Southland Company of Engi- 
neers came up to take a hand, and this commu- 
nication trench was the task that Sapper Duffy, 
J., found himself set to work on. Personally 
Sapper Duffy knew nothing of and cared less 
for the tactical situation. All he knew or cared 
about was that he had done a longish march up 
from the rear the night before, that he had put 



148 BETWEEN THE LINES 

in a hard day 's work carrying np bags of sand- 
bags and rolls of barbed wire from the carts 
to the trenches, and that here before him was 
another night's hard labour, to say nothing of 
the prospect of being drilled by a rifle bullet 
or mangled by a shell. All the information 
given him and his section by their section offi- 
cer was that they were to dig a communication 
trench, that it must be completed before morn- 
ing, that as long as they were above-ground 
they would probably be under a nasty fire, and 
that therefore the sooner they dug themselves 
down under cover the better it would be for the 
job and for all concerned. "A" section re- 
moved it& equipment and tunics and moved out 
on to the neutral ground in its shirt-sleeves, 
shivering at first in the raw cold and at the 
touch of the drizzling rain, but knowing that 
the work would very soon warm them beyond 
need of hampering clothes. In the ordinary 
course, digging a trench under fire is done more 
or less under cover by sapping — digging the 
first part in a covered spot, standing in the 
deep hole, cutting down the "face" and grad- 
ually burrowing a way across the danger zone. 
The advantage of this method is that the work- 
ers keep digging their way forward while all 
the time they are below ground and in the 



A CONVERT TO CONSCRIPTION 149 

safety of the sap they dig. The disadvantage 
is that the narrow trench only allows one or 
two men to get at its end or ' ' face ' ' to dig, and 
the work consequently takes time. Here it was 
urgent that the work be completed that night, 
because it was very certain that as soon as its 
whereabouts was disclosed by daylight it would 
be subjected to a fire too severe to allow any 
party to work, even if the necessary passage 
of men to and fro would leave any room for 
a working party. The digging therefore had 
to be done down from the surface, and the dig- 
gers, until they had sunk themselves into safety, 
had to stand and work fully exposed to the bul- 
lets that whined and hissed across from the 
enemy trenches. 

A zigzag line had been laid down to mark the 
track of the trench, and Sapper Duffy was 
placed by his sergeant on this line and told 
briefly to ' ' get on with it. ' ' Sapper Duffy spat 
on his hands, placed his spade on the exact in- 
dicated spot, drove it down, and began to dig 
at a rate that was apparently leisurely but ac- 
tually was methodical and nicely calculated to 
a speed that could be long and unbrokenly sus- 
tained. During the first minute many bullets 
whistled and sang past, and Sapper Duffy took 
no notice. A couple went ' ' whutt ' ' past his ear, 



150 BETWEEN THE LINES 

and he swore and slightly increased his work- 
ing speed. When a bullet whistles or sings 
past, it is a comfortable distance clear; when 
it goes "hiss" or "swish," it is too close for 

safely; and when it says "whutt" very sharply 
and viciously, it is merely a matter of being a 
few inches out either way. Sapper Duffy had 
Learned all this by lull experience, and now 
the number of "whutts" he heard gave him 
a very clear understanding of the dangers of 
this particular job. lie was the furthest out 
man of the line. On his left hand lie could 
just distinguish the dim figure of another dig- 
ger, stooping and straightening, stooping and 
straightening, with the rhythm and regularity 
of a machine. On his right hand was empty 
darkness, lit up every now and then by the glow 
of a flare-light showing indistinctly through the 
drizzling rain. Out of the darkness, or loom- 
ing big against the misty light, figures came 
and went stumbling and slipping in the mud — 
stretcher-bearers carrying or supporting the 
wounded, a ration party staggering under 
boxes balanced on shoulders, a strung-out line 
of supports stooped and trying to move quietly, 
men in double lilos linked together by swinging 
ammunition boxes. All these things Private 
Duffy saw out of the tail of his eye, and with- 



A CONVEBT TO CONSCRIPTION 151 

out stopping or Blacking the pace of bis dig- 
ging. He fell unconsciously to timing Ins move- 
ments to those of the other man, and for a time 
the machine became a twin engine working beat 

for beat — thrust, stoop, straighten, heave; 
thrust, stoop, straighten, heave. Then a bullet 
said the indescribable word that means "hit" 
and Duffy found that the other hall* of the ma- 
chine had stopped suddenly and collapsed in a 
little heap. Somewhere along the Line a voice 
called softly "Stretcher bearers," and almost 
on the word two men and a stretcher material- 
ised out of the darkness and a third was stoop- 
ing over the broken machine. "He's gone," 

said the third man after a pause. "Lift him 
clear." The two men dropped the stretcher, 
stooped and fumbled, Lifted the limp figure, 
laid it down a few yards away from the line, 
and vanished in the direction of another call. 
Sapper Duffy was alone with his spade and a 
foot-deep square hole — and the hissing bullets. 
The thoughts of the dead man so close beside 
him disturbed him vaguely, although he had 
never given a thought to the scores of dead he 
had seen behind the trench and that he knew 
were scattered thick over the "neutral ground" 
where they had fallen in the first charge. But 
this man had been one of his own company and 



152 BETWEEN THE LINES 

his own section — it was different about him 
somehow. But of course Sapper Duffy knew 
that the dead must at times lie where they fall, 
because the living must always come before the 
dead, especially while there are many more 
wounded than there are stretchers or stretcher- 
bearers. But all the same he didn't like poor 
old ''Jigger" Adams being left there — didn't 
see how he could go home and face old "Jig- 
ger's" missus and tell her he'd come away and 
left "Jigger" lying in the mud of a mangel- 
wurzel field. Blest if he wouldn't have a try 
when they were going to give Jigger a lift back. 
A line of men, shirt-sleeved like himself and 
carrying spades in their hands, moved out past 
him. An officer led them, and another with 
Sapper Duffy's section officer brought up the 
rear, and passed along the word to halt when 
he reached Duffy. "Here's the outside man of 
my lot," he said, "so you'll join on beyond him. 
You've just come in, I hear, so I suppose your 
men are fresh?" 

"Fresh!" said the other disgustedly. "Not 
much. They've been digging trenches all day 
about four miles back. It's too sickening. 
Pity we don't do like the Bosches — conscript all 
the able-bodied civilians and make 'em do all 



A CONVERT TO CONSCRIPTION 153 

this trench-digging in rear. Then we might be 
fresh for the firing line." 

"Tut, tut — mustn't talk about conscripting 
'em," said Duffy's officer reprovingly. "One 
volunteer, y'know — worth three pressed men." 

"Yes," said the other, "but when there isn't 
enough of the 'one volunteer' it's about time 
to collar the three pressed." 

Two or three flares went up almost simul- 
taneously from the enemy's line, the crackle of 
fire rose to a brisk fusillade, and through it 
ran the sharp ' * rat-at-at-at " of a machine-gun. 
The rising sound of the reports told plainly 
of the swinging muzzle, and officers and men 
dropped flat in the mud and waited till the 
sweeping bullets had passed over their heads. 
Men may work on and "chance it" against rifle 
fire alone, but the sweep of a machine-gun is 
beyond chance, and very near to the certainty 
of sudden death to all in the circle of its swing. 

The officers passed on and the new men be- 
gan to dig. Sapper Duffy also resumed work, 
and as he did so he noticed there was something 
familiar about the bulky shape of the new dig- 
ger next to him. "What lot are you?" asked 
the new man, heaving out the first spadeful 
rapidly and dexterously. 

"We're A Section, Southland Company," 



154 BETWEEN THE LINES 

said Duffy, "an' I say — ain't you Beefy Wil- 
son?" 

"That's me," said the other without check- 
ing his spade. "And blow me! you must be 
Duffy— Jem Duffy." 

"That's right," said Duffy. "But I didn't 
know you'd joined, Beefy." 

"Just a week or two after you," said Beefy. 

"Didjer know boss's two sons had got com- 
missions? Joined the Sappers an' tried to 
raise a company out o' the works to join. 
Couldn't though. I was the only one." 

"Look out — 'ere's that blanky maxim 
again, ' ' said Duffy, and they dropped flat very 
hurriedly. 

There was no more conversation at the mo- 
ment. There were too many bullets about to 
encourage any lingering there, and both men 
wanted all their breath for their work. It was 
hard work too. Duffy's back and shoulder and 
arm muscles began to ache dully, but he stuck 
doggedly to it. He even made an attempt to 
speed up to Beefy 's rate of shovelling, although 
he knew by old experience alongside Beefy that 
he could never keep up with him, the unchal- 
lenged champion of the old gang. 

Whether it was that the lifting rain had 
made them more visible or that the sound of 



A CONVERT TO CONSCRIPTION 155 

their digging had been heard they never knew, 
but the rifle fire for some reason became faster 
and closer, and again and again the call passed 
for stretcher-bearers, and a constant stream 
of wounded began to trickle back from the 
trench-diggers. Duffy's section was not so 
badly off now because they had sunk themselves 
hip deep, and the earth they threw out in a 
parapet gave extra protection. But it was 
harder work for them now because they stood 
in soft mud and water well above the ankles. 
The new company, being the more exposed, 
suffered more from the fire; but each man of 
them had a smaller portion of trench to dig, so 
they were catching up on the first workers. 
But all spaded furiously and in haste to be 
done with the job, while the officers and ser- 
geants moved up and down the line and watched 
the progress made. 

More cold-bloodedly unpleasant work it 
would be hard to imagine. The men had none 
of the thrill and heat of combat to help them; 
they had not the hope that a man has in a 
charge across the open — that a minute or two 
gets the worst of it over; they had not even 
the chance the fighting man has where at least 
his hand may save his head. Their business 
was to stand in the one spot, open and unpro- 



156 BETWEEN THE LINES 

tected, and without hope of cover or protection 
for a good hour or more on end. They must pay 
no heed to the singing bullets, to the crash of 
a bursting shell, to the rising and falling glow 
of the flares. Simply they must give body and 
mind to the job in hand, and dig and dig and 
keep on digging. There had been many brave 
deeds done by the fighting men on that day: 
there had been bold leading and bold following 
in the first rush across the open against a tor- 
nado of fire; there had been forlorn-hope 
dashes for ammunition or to pick up wounded ; 
there had been dogged and desperate courage 
in clinging all day to the battered trench under 
an earth-shaking tempest of high-explosive 
shells, bombs, and bullets. But it is doubtful 
if the day or the night had seen more nerve- 
trying, courage-testing work, more deliberate 
and long-drawn bravery than was shown, as a 
matter of course and as a part of the job, in 
the digging of that communication trench. 

It was done at last, and although it might not 
be a Class One Exhibition bit of work, it was, 
as Beefy Wilson remarked, "a deal better 'n 
none." And although the trench was already 
a foot deep in water, Beefy stated no more 
than bald truth in saying, "Come to-morrow 
there's plenty will put up glad wi' their knees 



A CONVERT TO CONSCRIPTION 157 

bein' below high-water mark for the sake o' 
havin' their heads below low bullet-mark." 

But, if the trench was finished, the night's 
work for the Engineers was not. They were 
moved up into the captured trench, and told 
that they had to repair it and wire out in front 
of it before they were done. 

They had half an hour's rest before recom- 
mencing work, and Beefy Wilson and Jem 
Duffy hugged the shelter of some tumbled 
sandbags, lit their pipes and turned the bowls 
down, and exchanged reminiscences. 

" Let's see," said Beefy. "Isn't Jigger 
Adams in your lot?" 

"Was," corrected Jem, "till an hour ago. 
'E's out yon wi' a bullet in 'im — stiff by now." 

Beefy breathed blasphemous regrets. 
"Rough on 'is missus an' the kids. Six of 'em, 
weren't it?" 

"Aw," assented Jem. "But she'll get 
suthin' from the Society funds." 

"Not a ha'porth," said Beefy. "You'll re- 
mem — no, it was just arter you left.. The trades 
unions decided no benefits would be paid out 
for them as 'listed. It was Ben Shrillett en- 
gineered that. 'E was Secretary an' Treas- 
urer an' things o' other societies as well as 
ours. 'E fought the War right along, an' 'e's 



158 BETWEEN THE LINES 

still fightin' it. 'E's a anti-militant, 'e ses." 

"Anti-militarist," Jem corrected. He had. 
taken some pains himself in the old days to 
get the word itself and some of its meaning 
right. 

1 ' Anti-military-ist then, ' ' said Beefy. ' ' Any- 
'ow, 'e stuck out agin all sorts o' soldierin'. 
This stoppin' the Society benefits was a trump 
card too. It blocked a whole crowd from listin' 
that I know myself would ha' joined. Queered 
the boss's sons raisin' that Company too. They 
'ad Frickers an' the B.S.L. Co. an' the works 
to draw from. Could ha' raised a couple hun- 
dred easy if Ben Shrillett 'adn't got at 'em. 
You know 'ow 'e talks the fellers round. ' ' 

"I know," agreed Jem, sucking hard at his 
pipe. 

The Sergeant broke in on their talk. "Now 
then," he said briskly. "Sooner we start, 
sooner we're done an' off 'ome to our downy 
couch. 'Ere, Duffy — " and he pointed out the 
work Duffy was to start. 

For a good two hours the Engineers la- 
boured like slaves again. The trench was so 
badly wrecked that it practically had to be re- 
constructed. It was dangerous work because 
it meant moving freely up and down, both 
where cover was and was not. It was phys- 



A CONVERT TO CONSCRIPTION 159 

ically heavy work because spade work in wet 
ground must always be that; and when the 
spade constantly encounters a debris of broken 
beams, sandbags, rifles, and other impediments, 
and the work has to be performed in eye-con- 
fusing alternations of black darkness and daz- 
zling flares, it makes the whole thing doubly 
hard. When you add in the constant whisk 
of passing bullets and the smack of their strik- 
ing, the shriek and shattering burst of high- 
explosive shells, and the drone and whir of fly- 
ing splinters, you get labour conditions re- 
moved to the utmost limit from ideal, and, to 
any but the men of the Sappers, well over the 
edge of the impossible. The work at any other 
time would have been gruesome and unnerving, 
because the gasping and groaning of the 
wounded hardly ceased from end to end of the 
captured trench, and in digging out the col- 
lapsed sections many dead Germans and some 
British were found blocking the vigorous thrust 
of the spades. 

Duffy was getting "fair fed up," although 
he still worked on mechanically. He wondered 
vaguely what Ben Shrillett would have said to 
any member of the trade union that had worked 
a night, a day, and a night on end. He won- 
dered, too, how Ben Shrillett would have 



160 BETWEEN THE LINES 

shaped in the Eoyal Engineers, and, for all his 
cracking muscles and the back-breaking weight 
and unwieldiness of the wet sandbags, he had 
to grin at the thought of Ben, with his podgy 
fat fingers and his visible rotundity of waist- 
coat, sweating and straining there in the wet- 
ness and darkness with Death whistling past 
his ear and crashing in shrapnel bursts about 
him. The joke was too good to keep to him- 
self, and he passed it to Beefy next time he 
came near. Beefy saw the jest clearly and 
guffawed aloud, to the amazement of a clay- 
daubed infantryman who had had nothing in 
his mind but thoughts of death and loading and 
firing his rifle for hours past. 

" Don't wonder Ben's agin conscription," 
said Beefy; "they might conscription 'im," 
and passed on grinning. 

Duffy had never looked at it in that light. 
He'd been anti-conscription himself, though 
now — mebbe — he didn't know — he wasn't so 
sure. 

And after the trench was more or less re- 
paired came the last and the most desperate 
business of all — the "wiring" out there in the 
open under the eye of the soaring lights. In 
ones and twos during the intervals of darkness 
the men tumbled over the parapet, dragging 



A CONVERT TO CONSCRIPTION 161 

stakes and coils of wire behind them. They 
managed to drive short stakes and run trip- 
wires between them without the enemy suspect- 
ing them. "When a light flamed, every man 
dropped flat in the mud and lay still as the 
dead beside them till the light died. In the 
brief intervals of darkness they drove the 
stakes with muffled hammers, and ran the 
lengths of barbed wire between them. Heart in 
mouth they worked, one eye on the dimly seen 
hammer and stake-head, the other on the Ger- 
man trench, watching for the first upward trail- 
ing sparks of the flare. Plenty of men were 
hit of course, because, light or dark, the bullets 
were kept flying, but there was no pause in 
the work, not even to help the wounded in. If 
they were able to crawl they crawled, dropping 
flat and still while the lights burned, hitching 
themselves painfully toward the parapet under 
cover of the darkness. If they could not crawl 
they lay still, dragging themselves perhaps be- 
hind the cover of a dead body or lying quiet 
in the open till the time would come when help- 
ers would seek them. Their turn came when 
the low wires were complete. The wounded 
were brought cautiously in to the trench then, 
and hoisted over the parapet; the working 
party was carefully detailed and each man's 



162 BETWEEN THE LINES 

duty marked out before they crawled again 
into the open with long stakes and strands of 
barbed wire. The party lay there minute after 
minute, through periods of light and darkness, 
until the officer in charge thought a favourable 
chance had come and gave the arranged sig- 
nal. Every man leaped to his feet, the stakes 
were planted, and quick blow after blow drove 
them home. Another light soared up and flared 
out, and every man dropped and held his 
breath, waiting for the crash of fire that would 
tell they were discovered. But the flare died 
out without a sign, and the working party hur- 
riedly renewed their task. This time the dark- 
ness held for an unusual length of time, and 
the stakes were planted, the wires fastened, 
and cross-pieces of wood with interlacings of 
barbed wire all ready were rolled out and 
pegged down without another light showing. 
The word passed down and the men scrambled 
back into safety. 

' ' Better shoot a light up quick, ' ' said the En- 
gineer officer to the infantry commander. 
1 ' They have a working party out now. I heard 
'em hammering. That's why they went so long 
without a light." 

A pistol light was fired and the two stared 
out into the open ground it lit. ' ' Thought so, ' ' 



A CONVERT TO CONSCRIPTION 163 

said the Engineer, pointing. "New stakes — 
see? And those fellows lying beside 'em." 

"Get your tools together, sergeant," he said, 
as several more lights flamed and a burst of 
rapid fire rose from the British rifles, "and 
collect your party. Our job's done, and I'm 
not sorry for it. ' ' 

It was just breaking daylight when the re- 
mains of the Engineers' party emerged from 
the communication trench and already the guns 
on both sides were beginning to talk. Beefy 
Wilson and Jem Duffy between them found 
Jigger's body and brought it as far as the 
dressing station. Behind the trenches Beefy 's 
company and Jem's section took different 
roads, and the two old friends parted with a 
casual "S'long" and "See you again some- 
time. ' ' 

Duffy had two hours ' sleep in a sopping wet 
roofless house, about three miles behind the fir- 
ing line. Then the section was roused and 
marched back to their billets in a shell- wrecked 
village, a good ten miles further back. They 
found what was left of the other three sections 
of the Southland Company there, heard the 
tale of how the Company had been cut up in 
advancing with the charging infantry, ate a 
meal, scraped some of the mud off themselves, 



164 BETWEEN THE LINES 

and sought their blankets and wet straw beds. 

Jim Duffy could not get the thought of Ben 
Shrillett, labour leader and agitator, out of his 
mind, and mixed with his thoughts as he went 
to sleep were that officer's remarks about 
pressed men. That perhaps accounts for his 
waking thoughts running on the same groove 
when his sergeant roused him at black mid- 
night and informed him the section was being 
turned out — to dig trenches. 

''Trenches," spluttered Sapper Duffy, 
"... us? How is it our turn again?" 

' ' Becos, my son, ' ' said the Sergeant, ' ' there 's 
nobody else about 'ere to take a turn. Come 
on ! Roll out ! Show a leg ! ' ' 

It was then that Sapper Duffy was finally 
converted, and renounced for ever and ever his 
anti-conscription principles. 

"Nobody else," he said slowly, "an' England 
fair stiff wi' men. . . . The sooner we get Con- 
scription, the better I'll like it. Conscription 
solid for every bloomin' able-bodied man an' 
boy. An' I 'ope Ben Shrillett an' 'is likes is 
the first to be took. Conscription," he said 
with the emphasis of finality as he fumbled in 
wet straw for a wetter boot, "out-an'-out, lock, 
stock, 'n barrel Conscription." 



A CONVERT TO CONSCRIPTION 165 

That same night Ben Shrillett was presiding 
at a meeting of the Strike Committee. He had 
read on the way to the meeting the communique 
that told briefly of Sapper Duffy and his fellow 
Engineers' work of the night before, and the 
descriptive phrases struck him as sounding 
neat and effective. He worked it now into his 
speech to the Committee, explaining how and 
where they and he benefited by this strike, un- 
popular as it had proved. 

"We've vindicated the rights of the work- 
ers," he said. "We've shown that, war or no 
war, Labour means to be more than mere wage- 
slaves. War can't last for ever, and we here, 
this Committee, proved ourselves by this strike, 
the true leaders and the Champions of Labour, 
the Guardians of the Rights of Trade Union- 
ism. We, gentlemen, have always been that, 
and by the strike — " and he concluded with the 
phrase from the despatch — "we have main- 
tained and consolidated our position." 

The Committee said, "Hear, hear." It is a 
pity they could not have heard what Sapper 
Duffy was saying as he sat up in his dirty wet 
straw, listening to the rustle and patter of rain 
on the barn's leaky roof and tugging on an icy- 
cold board-stiff boot. 



"BUSINESS AS USUAL" 

The remains of the Regiment were slowly 
working their way back out of action. They 
had been in it for three days — three strenuous 
nights and days of marching, of fighting, of 
suffering under heavy shell-fire, of insufficient 
and broken sleep, of irregular and unpalatable 
rations, of short commons of water, of nerve- 
stretching excitement and suspense, all the in- 
evitable discomforts and hardships that in the 
best organised of armies must be the part of 
any hard-fought action. The Regiment had 
suffered cruelly, and their casualties had to- 
talled some sixty per cent, of the strength. And 
now they were coming back, jaded and worn, 
filthily grimed and dirty, unshaven, unwashed, 
footsore, and limping, but still in good heart 
and able to see a subject for jests and laugh- 
ter in the sprawling fall of one of their num- 
ber plunging hastily to shelter from the unex- 
pected rush and crash of a shell, in the sultry 
stream of remarks from an exasperated private 
when he discovered a bullet-pierced water-bot- 
tle and the loss of his last precious drops of 
water. 

166 



"BUSINESS AS USUAL" 167 

The men were trickling out in slow, thin 
streams along communication and support 
trenches, behind broken buildings and walls 
and barricades, under any cover that screened 
them from the watchful eyes of the enemy ob- 
servers perched high in trees and buildings, 
and everywhere they could obtain a good look- 
out over our lines. 

In the minds of the men the thoughts of al- 
most all ran in the same grooves — first and 
most strongly, because perhaps the oftenest 
framed in speech, that it was hot — this hot and' 
that hot, hot as so-and-so or such-and-such, ac- 
cording to the annoyance or wit of the speaker ; 
second, and much less clearly defined, a dull 
satisfaction that they had done their share, and 
done it well, and that now they were on their 
way out to all the luxury of plenty food and 
sleep, water to drink, water and soap to wash 
with; third, and increasing in proportion as 
they got further from the forward line and the 
chance of being hit, a great anxiety to reach 
the rear in safety. The fear of being hit by 
shell or bullet was a hundredfold greater than 
it had been during their part in the action, when 
the risk was easily a hundred times greater, 
and more sympathy was expended over one 
man ' ' casualtied ' ' coming out than over a score 



168 BETWEEN THE LINES 

of those killed in the actual fight. It seemed 
such hard lines, after going through all they 
had gone through and escaping it scot free, 
that a man should be caught just when it was 
all over and he was on the verge of a more or 
less prolonged spell outside the urgent danger 
zone. 

The engagement was not over yet. It had 
been raging with varying intensity for almost a 
week, had resulted in a considerable advance of 
the British line, and had now resolved itself 
into a spasmodic series of struggles on the 
one side to "make good" the captured ground 
and steal a few more yards, if possible ; on the 
other, to strengthen the defence against further 
attacks and to make the captured trenches un- 
tenable. 

But the struggle now was to the Eegiment 
coming out a matter of almost outside interest, 
an interest reduced nearly to the level of the 
newspaper readers' at home, something to read 
or hear and talk about in the intervals of eat- 
ing and drinking, of work and amusement and 
sleep and the ordinary incidents of daily life. 
Except, of course, that the Regiment always 
had at the back of this casual interest the more 
personal one that if affairs went badly their 
routine existence "in reserve" might be rudely 



"BUSINESS AS USUAL" 169 

interrupted and they might be hurried back 
and flung again into the fight. 

But that was unlikely, and meantime there 
were still stray shells and bullets to be dodged, 
the rifles and kits were blasphemously heavy, 
and it was most blasphemously hot. The men 
were occupied enough in picking their steps in 
the broken ground, in their plodding, laborious 
progress, above all in paying heed to the order 
constantly passing back to "keep low," but 
they were still able to note with a sort of pro- 
fessional interest the damage done to the coun- 
tryside. A "small-holding" cottage between 
the trenches had been shelled and set on fire, 
and was gutted to the four bare, blackened 
walls. The ground about it still showed in the 
little squares and oblongs that had divided the 
different cultivations, but the difference now 
was merely of various weeds and rank growths, 
and the ground was thickly pitted with shell- 
holes. A length of road was gridironed with 
deep and laboriously dug trenches, and of the 
poplars that ran along its edge some were 
broken off in jagged stumps, some stood with 
stems as straight and bare as telegraph poles, 
or half cut through and collapsed like a half- 
shut knife or an inverted V, with their heads 
in the dust ; others were left with heads snapped 



170 BETWEEN THE LINES 

off and dangling in grey withered leaves, or 
with branches glinting white splinters and 
stripped naked, as in the dead of winter. In 
an orchard the fruit trees were smashed, up- 
rooted, heaped pell-mell in a tangle of broken 
branches, bare twisted trunks, fragments of 
stump a foot or a yard high, here a tree slashed 
off short, lifted, and flung a dozen yards, and 
left head down and trunk in air; there a row 
of currant bushes with a yawning shell-crater 
in the middle, a ragged remnant of bush at one 
end and the rest vanished utterly, leaving only 
a line of torn stems from an inch to a foot long 
to mark their place. 

A farm of some size had been at one time a 
point in the advanced trenches, and had been 
converted into a ''keep." Its late owner would 
never have recognised it in its new part. Such 
walls as were left had been buttressed out of 
sight by sandbags; trenches twisted about the 
outbuildings, burrowed under and into them, 
and wriggled out again through holes in the 
walls ; a market cart, turned upside down, and 
earthed over to form a bomb-store, occupied a 
corner of the farmyard; cover for snipers' 
loopholes had been constructed from plough- 
shares; a remaining fragment of a grain loft 
had become an "observing station"; the farm 



< 'BUSINESS AS USUAL" 171 

kitchen a doctor's dressing station; the cow- 
house a machine-gun place ; the cellar, with the 
stove transplanted from the kitchen, a cooking, 
eating, and sleeping room. All the roofs had 
been shelled out of existence. All the walls 
were notched by shells and peppered thick with 
bullet marks. A support trench about shoulder 
deep with a low parapet along its front was so 
damaged by shell fire that the men for the most 
part had to move along it bent almost double to 
keep out of sight and bullet reach. Every here 
and there — where a shell had lobbed fairly in 
— there was a huge crater, its sides sealing up 
the trench with a mass of tumbled earth over 
which the men scrambled crouching. Behind 
the trench a stretch of open field was pitted 
and pock-marked with shell-holes of all sizes 
from the shallow scoop a yard across to the 
yawning crater, big and deep enough to bury 
the whole field-gun that had made the smaller 
hole. The field looked exactly like those pic- 
tures one sees in the magazines of a lunar land- 
scape or the extinct volcanoes of the moon. 

The line of men turned at last into a long 
deep-cut communication trench leading out into 
a village. The air in the trench was heavy and 
close and stagnant, and the men toiled wearily 
up it, sweating and breathing hard. At a 



172 BETWEEN THE LINES 

branching fork one path was labelled with a 
neatly printed board "To Battn. H.Q. and the 
Mole Heap," and the other path "To the Duck 
Pond" — this last, the name of a trench, being 
a reminder of the winter and the wet. The 
officer leading the party turned into the trench 
for "The Mole Heap," walked up it, and 
emerged into the sunlight of the grass-grown 
village street, skirted a house, crossed the 
street by a trench, and passed through a hole 
chipped out of the brick wall into a house, the 
men tramping at his heels. The whole village 
was seamed with a maze of trenches, but these 
were only for use when the shelling had been 
particularly heavy. At other times people 
moved about the place by paths sufficiently well 
protected by houses and walls against the rifle 
bullets that had practically never ceased to 
smack into the village for many months past. 
These paths wandered behind buildings, across 
gardens, into and out of houses either by doors 
or by holes in the wall, over or round piles of 
rubble or tumbled brick-work, burrowed at 
times below ground-level on patches exposed to 
fire, ran frequently through a dozen cottages 
on end, passage having been effected simply by 
hacking holes through the connecting brick 
walls, in one place dived underground down 



"BUSINESS AS USUAL" 173 

some short stairs and took its way through sev- 
eral cellars by the same simple method of walk- 
ing through the walls from one cellar to an- 
other. The houses were littered with empty 
and rusty tins, torn and dirty clothing, ash- 
choked stoves, trampled straw, and broken fur- 
niture. The back-yards and gardens were piled 
with heaps of brick and tiles, biscuit and jam 
tins ; broken fences and rotted rags were over- 
run with a rank growth of grass and weeds and 
flowers, pitted with shell-holes and strewn with 
graves. 

The whole village was wrecked from end to 
end, was no more than a charnel house, a 
smashed and battered sepulchre. There was 
not one building that was whole, not one roof 
that had more than a few tiles clinging to shat- 
tered rafters, hardly a wall that was not 
cracked and bulged and broken. 

In the houses they passed through the men 
could still find sufficient traces of the former 
occupants to indicate their class and station. 
One might have been a labourer's cottage, with 
a rough deal table, a red-rusted stove-fireplace, 
an oleograph in flaming crude colours of the 
"Virgin and Child" hanging on the plaster 
wall, the fragments of a rough cradle over- 
turned in a corner, a few coarse china crocks 



174 BETWEEN THE LINES 

and ornaments and figures chipped and broken 
and scattered about the mantel, and the bare 
board floor. Another house had plainly been 
a home of some refinement. The rooms were 
large, with lofty ceilings; there were carpets on 
the floors, although so covered with dirt and 
dried mud and the dust of fallen plaster that 
they were hardly discernible as carpets. In one 
room a large polished table had a broken leg 
replaced by an up-ended barrel, one big arm- 
chair had its springs and padding showing 
through the burst upholstering. Another was 
minus all its legs, and had the back wrenched 
off and laid flat with the seat on the floor, evi- 
dently to make a bed. There were several 
good engravings hanging askew on the walls 
or lying about the floor, all soiled with rain and 
cut and torn by their splintered glass. The 
large open-grate fireplace had an artistically 
carved overmantel sadly chipped and smoke- 
blackened, a tiled hearth in fragments ; the wall- 
paper in a tasteful design of dark green and 
gold was blotched and discoloured, and hung in 
peeling strips and gigantic "dog's-ears"; from 
the poles and rings over the windows the tat- 
tered fragments of a lace curtain dangled. 
There was plenty of evidence that the room 
had been occupied by others since its lawful 



"BUSINESS AS USUAL" 175 

tenants had fled. It was strewn with broken 
or cast-off military equipments, worn-out boots, 
frayed and mud-caked putties, a burst haver- 
sack and pack-valise, a holed water-bottle, 
broken webbing straps and belts, a bayonet 
with a snapped blade, a torn grey shirt, and a 
goatskin coat. The windows had the shutters 
closed, and were sandbagged up three parts 
their height, the need for this being evident 
from the clean, round bullet-holes in the shut- 
ters above the sandbags, and the ragged tears 
and holes in the upper part of the opposite wall. 
In an upper corner a gaping shell-hole had 
linen table-cloths five or six fold thick hung 
over to screen the light from showing through 
at night. In a corner lay a heap of mouldy 
straw and a bed-mattress; the table and fire- 
place were littered with dirty pots and dishes, 
the floor with empty jam and biscuit tins, 
opened and unopened bully-beef tins, more be- 
ing full than empty because the British sol- 
dier must be very near starving point before 
he is driven to eat "bully." Over everything 
lay, like a white winding-sheet, the cover of 
thick plaster-dust shaken down from the ceil- 
ing by the hammer-blows of the shells. The 
room door opened into a passage. At its end 
a wide staircase curved up into empty space, 



176 BETWEEN THE LINES 

the top banisters standing ont against the open 
blue sky. The whole upper storey had been 
blown off by shell fire and lay in the garden be- 
hind the house, a jumble of brickwork, win- 
dow-frames, tiles, beams, beds and bedroom 
furniture, linen, and clothes. 

These houses were inexpressibly sad and for- 
lorn-looking, with all their privacy and inner 
homeliness naked and exposed to the passer- 
by and the staring sunlight. Some were no 
more than heaps of brick and stone and mor- 
tar; but these gave not nearly such a sense of 
desolation and desertion as those less damaged, 
as one, for instance, with its front blown com- 
pletely out, so that one could look into all its 
rooms, upper and lower and the stairs between, 
exactly as one looks into those dolls' houses 
where the front is hinged to swing open. 

The village had been on the edge of the fight- 
ing zone for months, had been casually shelled 
each day in normal times, bombarded furiously 
during every attack or counter-attack. The 
church, with its spire or tower, had probably 
been suspected as an artillery observing sta- 
tion by the Germans, and so had drawn a full 
share of the fire. All that was left of the 
church itself was one corner of shell-holed 
walls, and a few roof-beams torn and splin- 



" BUSINESS AS USUAL" 177 

tered and stripped of cover. The tower was 
a broken, jagged, stump — an empty shell, with 
one side blown almost completely out ; the oth- 
ers, or what remained of them, cracked and 
tottering. The churchyard was a wild chaos 
of tumbled masonry, broken slates, uprooted 
and overturned tombstones, jumbled wooden 
crosses, crucifixes, black wooden cases with 
fronts of splintered glass, torn wreaths, and 
crosses of imitation flowers. Amongst the 
graves yawned huge shell craters ; tossed hither 
and thither amongst the graves and broken 
monuments and bricks and rubbish were bones 
and fragments of coffins. 

But all the graves were not in the church- 
yard. The whole village was dotted from end 
to end with them, some alone in secluded cor- 
ners, others in rows in the backyards and veg- 
etable gardens. Most of them were marked 
with crosses, each made of two pieces of pack- 
ing-case or biscuit-box, with a number, rank, 
name, and regiment printed in indelible pencil. 
On some of the graves were bead-work flowers, 
on others a jam-pot or crock holding a hand- 
ful of withered sun-dried flower-stalks. Nearly 
all were huddled in close to house or garden 
walls, one even in the narrow passage between 
two houses. There were, in many cases, other 



178 BETWEEN THE LINES 

and less ugly open spaces and gardens offering 
a score of paces from these forlorn last rest- 
ing-places apparently so oddly selected and 
sadly misplaced ; but a second look showed that 
in each case the grave was dug where some wall 
or house afforded cover to the burying-party, 
from bullets. In the bright sunlight, half-hid- 
den under or behind heaps of debris, with 
crosses leaning drunkenly aslant, these graves 
looked woefully dreary and depressing. But 
the files of men moving round and between 
them, or stepping carefully over them, hardly 
gave them a glance, except where one in pass- 
ing caught at a leaning cross and thrust it 
deeper and straighter into the earth. But the 
men's indifference meant no lack of feeling 
or respect for the dead. The respect was there, 
subtle but unmistakable, instanced slightly by 
the care every man took not to set foot on a 
grave, by the straightening of that cross, by 
those withered flowers and dirty wreaths, even 
as it had been shown scores of times by the men 
who crawl at risk of their lives into the open 
between the forward trenches at night to bring 
in their dead for decent burial. 

Outside the shattered village stood the re- 
mains of a large factory, and on this the out- 
coming files of the Eegiment converged, and the 



"BUSINESS AS USUAL" 179 

first arrivals halted to await the rest. What 
industry the factory had been concerned with 
it was impossible to tell. It was full of ma- 
chinery, smashed, bent, twisted, and over- 
turned, all red with rust, mixed up with and in 
parts covered by stone and brickwork, beams 
and iron girders, the whole sprinkled over with 
gleaming fragments of window-glass. The 
outside walls were almost completely knocked 
flat, tossed helter-skelter outwards or on top 
of the machinery. The tall chimney — another 
suspected "observing post" probably — lay in 
a heap of broken brickwork with the last yard 
or two of the base standing up out of the heap, 
and even in its remaining stump were other 
ragged shell-holes. A couple of huge boilers 
had been torn off their brick furnaces by the 
force of some monster shell and tossed clear 
yards away. One was poised across the broken 
outer wall, with one end in the road. The thick 
rounded plates were bent and dented in like a 
kicked biscuit-tin, were riddled and pierced 
through and through as if they had been paper. 
The whole factory and its machinery must once 
have represented a value of many thousands of 
francs. Now it was worth just the value of its 
site, less the cost of clearing it of debris and 
the price of some tons of old iron. 



180 BETWEEN THE LINES 

Some of the men wandered about amongst 
the ruins, examining them curiously, tracing 
the work of individual shells, speculating on 
the number of hands the place had once em- 
ployed, and where those hands were now. 

"Man, man," said a Scotch private, "sic an 
awfu' waste. Think o' the siller it must ha' 
cost. ' ' 

1 ' 'Ow would you like to be a share- 'older in 
the company, Jock?" said his companion. 
"Ain't many divvy dends due to 'em this 
Christmas." 

The Scot shook his head sadly. ' ' This place 
an' the hale toon laid waste," he said. "It's 
awfu' tae think o' it." 

"An' this is one bloomin' pebble in a whole 
bloomin' beach," said the other. "D'you re- 
member Wipers an' all them other towns? An' 
that old chap we saw sittin' on the roadside 
weepin' 'is eyes out 'cos the farm an' the fruit- 
trees 'e'd spent 'is life fixin' up was blowed 
to glory b' Jack Johnsons. We 'ave seed some 
rummy shows 'ere, 'aven't we! Not but what 
this ain't a pretty fair sample o' wreck," he 
continued critically. "There's plenty 'ud think 
they'd got their two-pennorth to see this on 
the screen o' a picture-show at 'ome, Jock." 

"Huh! Picturs!" sniffed Jock. "Picturs, 



" BUSINESS AS USUAL" 181 

and the-ayters, and racin ', and fitba '. Ah wnn- 
ner folks hasna better use for their time and 
money, at sic a time's this." 

"Aw," said the other, "but y' forget, Jock. 
Out 'ere they 'ave their 'ouses blown up an' 
their business blown in. A thousan' a day o' 
the like o' you an' me may be gettin' killed off 
for six months on end. But at 'ome, Jock — 
aw!" 

He stooped and picked up a lump of white, 
chalky earth from the roadside, scrawled with 
it on the huge boiler- end that rested on the 
broken wall, and left the written words to finish 
the spoken sentence. 

Jock read, and later the remains of the Regi- 
ment read as they moved off past the aching 
desolation of the silent factory, down the shell- 
torn road, across the war-swept ruina of a 
whole country-side. A few scowled at the 
thoughts the words raised, the most grinned 
and passed rough jests ; but to all those men in 
the thinned ranks, their dead behind them, the 
scenes of ruin before them, the words bit, and 
bit deep. They ran : 



But it's 
Bisness As Usual- 
AT HOME. 



A HYMN OF HATE 

"The troops continue in excellent spirits." — 

ExTKACT FROM OFFICIAL DESPATCH. 

To properly appreciate, from the Army's 
point of view, the humour of this story, it must 
always be remembered that the regiment con- 
cerned is an English one — entirely and em- 
phatically English, and indeed almost entirely 
East End Cockney. 

It is true that the British Army on active 
service has a sense of humour peculiarly its 
own, and respectable civilians have been known, 
when jests were retailed with the greatest gusto 
by soldier raconteurs, to shudder and fail ut- 
terly to understand that there could be any 
humour in a tale so mixed up with the grim 
and ghastly business of killing and being killed. 

A biggish battle had died out about a week 
before in the series of spasmodic struggles of 
diminishing fury that have characterised most 
of the battles on the Western Front, when the 
Tower Bridge Rifles found themselves in oc- 
cupation of a portion of the forward line which 

182 



A HYMN OF HATE 183 

* 

was only separated from the German trench by 
a distance varying from forty to one hundred 
yards. Such close proximity usually results 
in an interchange of compliments between the 
two sides, either by speech or by medium of a 
board with messages written on it — the board 
being reserved usually for the strokes of wit 
most likely to sting, and therefore best worth 
conveying to the greatest possible number of 
the enemy. 

The ' ' Towers ' ' were hardly installed in their 
new position when a voice came from the Ger- 
man parapet, "Hello, Tower Bridge Rifles! 
Pleased to meet you again." 

The Englishmen were too accustomed to it 
to be surprised by this uncannily prompt rec- 
ognition by the enemy of a newly relieving 
regiment of which they had not seen so much 
as a cap top. 

"Hullo, Boshy," retorted one of the Towers. 
"You're makin' a mistake this time. We ain't 
the Tower Bridges. We're the Kamchatka 
'Ighlanders." 

"An' you're a liar if you says you're pleased 
to meet us again," put in another. "If you've 
met us afore I lay you was too dash sorry for 
it to want to meet us again." 

"Oh, we know who you are all right," re- 



184 BETWEEN THE LINES 

plied the voice. ' ' And we know you 've just re- 
lieved the Fifth Blankshires ; and what's more, 
we know who 's going to relieve you, and when. ' ' 

" 'E knows a bloomin' heap," said a Tower 
Bridge private disgustedly; "an' wot's more, 
I believe 'e does know it." Then, raising his 
voice, he asked, "Do you know when we're 
comin' to take some more of them trenches o' 
yours t ' ' 

This was felt by the listening Towers to be 
a master-stroke, remembering that the British 
had taken and held several trenches a week be- 
fore, but the reply rather took the wind out of 
their sails. 

"You can't take any more," said the voice. 
"You haven't shells enough for another attack. 
You had to stop the last one because your guns 
were running short." 

"Any'ow," replied an English corporal who 
had been handing round half a dozen grenades, 
"we ain't anyways short o' bombs. 'Ave a 
few to be goin ' on with, ' ' and he and his party 
let fly. They listened with satisfaction to the 
bursts, and through their trench periscopes 
watched the smoke and dust clouds billowing 
from the trench opposite. 

"An' this," remarked a Tower private, "is 
about our cue to exit, the stage bein' required 



A HYMN OF HATE 185 

for a scene-shift by some Bosh bombs, ' ' and he 
disappeared, crawling into a dug-out. During 
the next ten minutes a couple of dozen bombs 
came over and burst in and about the British 
trench and scored three casualties, " slightly 
wounded. ' ' 

"Hi there! Where's that Soho barber's as- 
sistant that thinks 'e can talk Henglish 1 ?" de- 
manded the Towers' spokesman cheerfully. 

That annoyed the English-speaking German, 
as of course incidentally it was meant to do. 

"I'm here, Private Petticoat Lane," retorted 
the voice, "and if I couldn't speak better Eng- 
lish than you I'd be shaming Soho." 

"You're doing that anyway, you bloomin' 
renegade dog-stealer, " called back the private. 
"Wy didn't you pay your landlady in Lunnon 
for the lodgin's you owed when you run away f ' ' 

' ' Schweinhund ! ' ' said the voice angrily, and 
a bullet slapped into the parapet in front of 
the taunting private. 

"Corp'ril," said that artist in invective 
softly, "if you'll go down the trench a bit or 
up top o' that old barn behind I'll get this 
bloomin' Soho waiter mad enough to keep on 
shootin' at me, an' you'll p'raps get a chance 
to snipe 'im." 

The corporal sought an officer's permission 



186 BETWEEN THE LINES 

and later a precarious perch on the broken roof 
of the barn, while Private Eobinson extended 
himself in the manufacture of annoying re- 
marks. 

1 ' That last 'un was a fair draw, Smithy, ' ' he 
exulted to a fellow private. "I'll bet 'e shot 
the moon, did a bolt for it, when 'e mobilised." 

"Like enough," agreed Smithy. "Go on, oP 
man. Give 'im some more jaw." 

"I s'pose you left without payin' your wash- 
in' bill either, didn't you, sower-krowf?" de- 
manded Private Robinson. There was no re- 
ply from the opposition. 

"I expeck you lef ' a lot o' little unpaid bills, 
didn't you? — if you was able to find anyone to 
give you tick." 

"I'll pay them — when we take London," said 
the voice. 

"That don't give your pore oP landlady 
much 'ope," said Robinson. "Take Lunnon! 
Blimy, you're more like to take root in them 
trenches o' yours — unless we comes over again 
an' chases you out." 

Again there was no reply. Private Robinson 
shook his head. " 'E's as 'ard to draw as 
the pay that's owin' to me," he said. "You 
'ave a go, Smithy." 

Smithy, a believer ia the retort direct and no 



A HYMN OF HATE 187 

trafficker in the finer shades of sarcasm, cleared 
his throat and lifted up his voice. " 'Ere, why 
don't you speak when you're spoke to, you lop- 
eared lager-beer barrel, you. Take your fice 
out o' that 'orse-flesh cat's meat sossidge an' 
speak up, you baby-butcherin ' hen-roost rob- 
ber." 

"That ain't no good, Smithy," Private Eob- 
inson pointed out. "Y'see, callin' 'im 'ard 
names only makes 'im think 'e's got you angry 
like — that 'e's drawee! you." 

Another voice called something in German. 

"Just tell them other monkeys to stop their 
chatter, Soho," he called out, "an' get back 
in their cage. If they want to talk to gen'P- 
men they must talk English." 

"I like your d — d impertinence," said the 
voice scornfully. "We'll make you learn Ger- 
man, though, when we've taken England." 

"Oh, it's Englan' you're takin' now," said 
Private Robinson. "But all you'll ever take 
of Englan' will be same as you took before — a 
tuppenny tip if you serves the soup up nice, or 
a penny tip if you gives an Englishman a 
proper clean shave." 

The rifle opposite banged again and the bul- 
let slapped into the top of the parapet. "That 
drawed 'bn again," chuckled Private Eobinson, 



188 BETWEEN THE LINES 

"but I wonder why the corp'ril didn't get a 
whack at 'im?" 

He pulled away a small sandbag that blocked 
a loophole, and, holding his rifle by the butt at 
arm-length, poked the muzzle out slowly. A 
moment later two reports rang out — one from 
in front and one behind. 

' ' I got 'im, ' ' said the corporal three minutes 
later. ' ' One bloke was looking with a periscope 
and I saw a little cap an' one eye come over the 
parapet. By the way 'is 'ands jerked up an' 
'is 'ead jerked back when I fired, I fancy 'e 
copped it right enough." 

Private Eobinson got to work with a piece of 
chalk on a board and hoisted over the parapet 
a notice, "B.I.P. 1 Boshe, late lamented Soho 
gargon. ' ' 

"Pity I dunno the German for 'late lament- 
ed,' but they've always plenty that knows Eng- 
lish enough to unnerstand," he commented. 

He spent the next ten minutes ragging the 
Germans, directing his most brilliant efforts 
of sarcasm against made-in-Germany English- 
speakers generally and Soho waiters in par- 
ticular; and he took the fact there was no re- 
ply from the Voice as highly satisfactory evi- 
dence that it had been the "Soho waiter" who 
had ' ' copped it. ' ' 



A HYMN OF HATE 189 

"Exit the waiter — curtain, an' soft music!" 
remarked a private known as 'Enery Irv- 
ing throughout the battalion, and whistled a 
stave of "We shall meet, but we shall miss 
him." 

"Come on, 'Enery, give us 'is dyin' speech," 
someone urged, and 'Enery proceeded to recite 
an impromptu "Dyin' Speech of the Dachs- 
hund-stealer, " as he called it, in the most ap- 
proved fashion of the East End drama, with 
all the accompaniments of rolling eyes, breast- 
clutchings, and gasping pauses. 

"Now then, where 's the orchestra?" he de- 
manded when the applause had subsided, and 
the orchestra, one mouth-organ strong, prompt- 
ly struck up a lilting music-hall ditty. From 
that he slid into ' \ My Little Grey Home, ' ' with 
a very liberal measure of time to the long- 
drawn notes especially. The song was caught 
up and ran down the trench in full chorus. 
When it finished the orchestra was just on the 
point of starting another tune, when 'Enery 
held up his hand. 

" ' 'E goes on Sunday to the church, an' sits 
among the choir,' " he quoted solemnly and 
added, "Voices 'eard, off." 

Two or three men were singing in the Ger- 
man trench, and as they sang the rest joined in 



190 BETWEEN THE LINES 

and " Deutschland iiber Alles" rolled forth in 
full strength and harmony. 

"Bray-vo! An' not arf bad neither," said 
Private Robinson approvingly. " Though I 
dunno wot it's all abart. Now s'pose we gives 
'em another." 

They did, and the Germans responded with 
"The Watch on the Rhine." This time Pri- 
vate Robinson and the rest of the Towers rec- 
ognised the song and capped it in great glee 
with "Winding up the Watch on the Rhine," 
a parody which does not go out of its way to 
spare German feelings. 

"An' 'ow d'you like that, ol' sossidge scof- 
fers'?" demanded Private Robinson loudly. 

1 ' You vait, ' ' bellowed a guttural voice. ' ' Us 
vind you op — quick!" 

"Vind op — squeak, an' squeakin'," retorted 
Private Robinson. 

The German reply was drowned in a burst 
of new song which ran like wild-fire the length 
of the German trench. A note of fierce passion 
rang in the voices, and the Towers sat listening 
in silence. 

"Dunno wot it is," said one. "But it sounds 
like they was sayin' something nasty, an' mean- 
in' it all." 



A HYMN OF HATE 191 

But one word, shouted fiercely and lustily, 
caught Private Bobinson's ear. 

" 'Ark!" he said in eager anticipation. "I 
do believe it's — s-sh-! There!" triumphantly, 
as again the word rang out — the one word at 
the end of the verse . . . "England." 

"It's it. It's the ' 'Ymn of 'Ate!' " 

The word flew down the British trench — 
"It's the 'Ymn! They're singin' the ' 'Ymn 
of 'Ate, ' ' ' and every man sat drinking the air 
in eagerly. This was luck, pure gorgeous luck. 
Hadn't the Towers, like many another regi- 
ment, heard about the famous "Hymn of 
Hate," and read it in the papers, and had it 
declaimed with a fine frenzy by Private 'Enery 
Irving? Hadn't they, like plenty other regi- 
ments, longed to hear the tune, but longed in 
vain, never having found one who knew it? 
And here it was being sung to them in full 
chorus by the Germans themselves. Oh, this 
was luck. 

The mouth-organist was sitting with his 
mouth open and his head turned to listen, as 
if afraid to miss a single note. 

" 'Ave you got it, Snapper?" whispered Pri- 
vate Kobinson anxiously at the end. "Will 
you be able to remember it?" 

Snapper, with his eyes fixed on vacancy, be- 



192 BETWEEN THE LINES 

gan to play the air over softly, when from fur- 
ther down the trench came a murmur of ap- 
plause, that rose to a storm of hand-clappings 
and shouts of "Bravo!" and "Encore — 'core — 
'core!" 

The mouth-organist played on unheedingly 
and Private Robinson sat following him with 
attentive ear. 

"I'm not sure of that bit just there," said 
the player, and tried it over with slight varia- 
tions. "P'raps I'll remember it better after 
a day or two. I'm like that wi' some toons." 

"We might kid 'em to sing it again," said 
Robinson hopefully, as another loud cry of 
"Encore!" rang from the trench. 

"Was you know vat we haf sing?" asked a 
German voice in tones of some wonderment. 

"It's a great song, Dutchie," replied Pri- 
vate Robinson. "Fine song — goot — bong! 
Sing it again to us. " 

"You haf not understand," said the German 
angrily, and then suddenly from a little fur- 
ther along the German trench a clear tenor 
rose, singing the Hymn in English. The Tow- 
ers subsided into rapt silence, hugging them- 
selves over their stupendous luck. When the 
singer came to the end of the verse he paused 
an instant, and a roar leaped from the German 



A HYMN OF HATE 193 

trench . . . " England ! ' ' It died away and the 
singer took up the solo. Quicker and quicker 
he sang, the song swirling upward in a rising 
note of passion. It checked and hung an in- 
stant on the last line, as a curling wave hangs 
poised; and even as the falling wave breaks 
thundering and rushing, so the song broke in 
a crash of sweeping sound along the line of 
the German trench on that one word — " Eng- 
land!" 

Before the last sound of it had passed, the 
singer had plunged into the next verse, his 
voice soaring and shaking with an intensity of 
feeling. The whole effect was inspiring, won- 
derful, dramatic. One felt that it was em- 
blematic, the heart and soul of the German 
people poured out in music and words. And 
the scorn, the bitter anger, hatred, and malice 
that vibrated again in that chorused last word 
might well have brought fear and trembling to 
the heart of an enemy. But the enemy imme- 
diately concerned, to wit His Majesty's Regi- 
ment of Tower Bridge Rifles, were most ob- 
viously not impressed with fear and trembling. 
Impressed they certainly were. Their applause 
rose in a gale of clappings and cries and shouts. 
They were impressed, and Private 'Enery Ir- 
ving, clapping his hands sore and stamping his 



194 BETWEEN THE LINES 

feet in the trench-bottom, voiced the impres- 
sion exactly. "It beats Saturday night in the 
gallery o' the old Brit.," he said enthusiasti- 
cally. "That bloke — blimy — 'e ought to be 
doin' the star part at Drury Lane;" and he 
wiped his hot hands on his trousers and fell 
again to beating them together, palms and fin- 
gers curved cunningly, to obtain a maximum of 
noise from the effort. 

An officer passed hurriedly along the trench. 
"If there's any firing, every man to fire over 
the parapet and only straight to his own 
front," he said, and almost at the moment 
there came a loud "bang" from out in front, 
followed quickly by "bang-bang-bang" in a 
running series of reports. 

The shouting had cut off instantly on the 
first bang, some rifles squibbed off at intervals 
for a few seconds and increased suddenly to 
a sputtering roar. With the exception of one 
platoon near their centre the Towers replied 
rapidly to the fire, the maxims joined in, and 
a minute later, with a whoop and a crash the 
shells from a British battery passed over the 
trench and burst along the line of the German 
parapet. After that the fire died away gradu- 
ally, and about ten minutes later a figure scram- 
bled hastily over the parapet and dropped into 



A HYMN OF HATE 195 

safety, his boots squirting water, his wet shirt- 
tails flapping about his bare wet and muddy 
legs. He was the "bomb officer" who had 
taken advantage of the "Hymn of Hate" diver- 
sion to go crawling up a little ditch that crossed 
the neutral ground until he was near enough 
to fling into the German trench the bombs he 
carried, and, as he put it later in reporting 
to the O.C., "give 'em something to hate 
about. ' ' 

And each evening after that, for as long as 
they were in the trenches, the men of the Tower 
Bridge Rifles made a particular point of sing- 
ing the "Hymn of Hate," and the wild yell of 
"England" that came at the end of each verse 
might almost have pleased any enemy of Eng- 
land's instead of aggravating them intensely, 
as it invariably did the Germans opposite, to 
the extent of many wasted rounds. 

"It's been a great do, Snapper," said Pri- 
vate 'Enery Irving some days after, as the 
battalion tramped along the road towards "re- 
serve billets." "An' I 'aven't enjoyed myself 
so much for months. Didn't it rag 'em beauti- 
ful, an' won't we fair stagger the 'ouse at the 
next sing-sing o' the brigade?" 

Snapper chuckled and breathed contentedly 
into his beloved mouth-organ, and first 'Enery 



196 BETWEEN THE LINES 

and then the marching men took up the words : 

'Ite of the 'eart, an' 'ite of the 'and, 
'Ite by water, an' 'ite by land. 
'Oo do we 'ite to beat the band? 

(deficient memories, it will be noticed, being 
compensated by effective inventions in odd 
lines). 

The answering roar of "England" startled 
almost to shying point the horse of a brigadier 
trotting up to the tail of the column. 

"What on earth are those fellows singing?" 
he asked one of his officers while soothing his 
mount. 

"I'm not sure, sir," said the officer, "but I 
believe — by the words of it — yes, it's the Ger- 
mans' 'Hymn of Hate.' " 

A French staff officer riding with the briga- 
dier stared in astonishment, first at the march- 
ing men, and then at the brigadier, who was 
rocking with laughter in his saddle. 

"Where on earth did they get the tune? I've 
never heard it before," said the brigadier, and 
tried to hum it. The staff officer told him some- 
thing of the tale as he had heard it, and the 
Frenchman's amazement and the brigadier's 
laughter grew as the tale was told. 

We 'ave one foe, an' one alone — England ! 



A HYMN OF HATE 197 

bellowed the Towers, and out of the pause that 
came so effectively before the last word of the 
verse rose a triumphant squeal from the mouth- 
organ, and the appealing voice of Private 'En- 
ery Irving — "Naw then, put a bit of 'ate into 
it." But even that artist of the emotions had 
to admit his critical sense of the dramatic fully 
satisfied by the tone of vociferous wrath and 
hatred flung into the Towers' answering roar 
of " England!" 

''What an extraordinary people!" said the 
French staff officer, eyeing the brigadier shak- 
ing with laughter on his prancing charger. 
And he could only heave his shoulders up in an 
ear-embracing shrug of non-comprehension 
when the laughing brigadier tried to explain 
to him (as I explained to you in the beginning). 

"And the best bit of the whole joke is that 
this particular regiment is English to the back- 
bone." 



THE COST 

"The cost in casualties cannot he considered 
heavy in view of the success gained." — Extract 
from Official Despatch. 

Outside there were blazing sunshine and heat, 
a haze of smoke and dust, a nostril-stinging reek 
of cordite and explosive, and a never-ceasing 
tumult of noises. Inside was gloom, but a 
closer, heavier heat, a drug-shop smell, and all 
the noises of outside, little subdued, and min- 
gled with other lesser but closer sounds. Out- 
side a bitterly fought trench battle was raging; 
here, inside, the wreckage of battle was being 
swiftly but skilfully sorted out, classified, bound 
up, and despatched again into the outer world. 
For this was one of the field dressing stations 
scattered behind the fringe of the fighting line, 
and through one or other of these were passing 
the casualties as quickly as they could be col- 
lected and brought back. The station had been 
a field labourer's cottage, and had been roughly 
adapted to its present use. The interior was in 
semi-darkness, because the windows were com- 

198 



THE COST 199 

pletely blocked up with sandbags. The door, 
which faced towards the enemy's lines, was also 
sandbagged up, and a new door had been made 
by knocking out an opening through the mud- 
brick wall. There were two rooms connected 
by a door, enlarged again by the tearing down 
of the lath and plaster partition. The only 
light in the inner room filtered through the 
broken and displaced tiles of the roof. On 
the floor, laid out in rows so close packed that 
there was barely room for an orderly to move, 
were queer shapeless bundles that at first glance 
could hardly be recognised as men. They lay 
huddled on blankets or on the bare floor in dim 
shadowy lines that were splashed along their 
length with irregularly placed gleaming white 
patches. They were puzzling, these patches, 
shining like snow left in the hollows of a moun- 
tain seen far off and in the dusk. A closer look 
revealed them as the bandages of the first field 
dressing that every man carries stitched in his 
uniform against the day he or the stretcher- 
bearers may rip open the packet to use it. A 
few of the men moved restlessly, but most lay 
very still. A few talked, and one or two even 
laughed; and another moaned slowly and at 
even unbroken intervals. Two or three lighted 
cigarettes pin-pricked the gloom in specks of 



200 BETWEEN THE LINES 

orange light that rose and fell, glowing and 
sparkling and lighting a faint outline of nose 
and lip and cheeks, sinking again to dull red. 
A voice called, feebly at first, and then, as no 
one answered, more strongly and insistently, 
for water. When at last it was brought, every 
other man there demanded or pleaded for a 
drink. 

In the other room a clean-edged circle of 
light blazed in the centre from an acetylene 
lamp, leaving the walls and corners in a shadow 
deep by contrast to blackness. Half the length 
of a rough deal table jutted out of the darkness 
into the circle of light, and beneath it its black 
shadow lay solid half-way across the light ring 
on the floor. 

And into this light passed a constant pro- 
cession of wounded, some halting for no more 
than the brief seconds necessary for a glance at 
the placing of a bandage and an injection of an 
anti-tetanus serum, some waiting for long pain- 
laden minutes while a bandage was stripped off, 
an examination made, in certain cases a rapid 
play made with cruel-looking scissors and 
knives. Sometimes a man would walk to the 
table and stoop a bandaged head or thrust a 
bandaged hand or arm into the light. Or a 
stretcher would appear from the darkness and 



THE COST 201 

be laid under the light, while the doctors ' hands 
busied themselves about the khaki form that lay 
there. Some of the wounds were slight, some 
were awful and unpleasant beyond telling. The 
doctors worked in a high pressure of haste, but 
the procession never halted for an instant ; one 
patient was hardly clear of the light-circle be- 
fore another appeared in it. There were two 
doctors there — one a young man with a lieuten- 
ant's stars on his sleeve; the other, apparently 
a man of about thirty, in bare arms with rolled- 
up shirt-sleeves. His jacket, hooked on the 
back of a broken chair, bore the badges of a 
captain's rank. The faces of both as they 
caught the light were pale and glistening with 
sweat. The hands of both as they flitted and 
darted about bandages or torn flesh were swift 
moving, but steady and unshaking as still pieces 
of machinery. Words that passed between the 
two were brief to curtness, technical to the last 
syllable. About them the dust motes danced in 
the light, the air hung heavy and stagnant, 
smelling of chemicals, the thick sickly scent 
of blood, the sharper reek of sweat. And every- 
thing about them, the roof over their heads, the 
walls around, the table under their hands, the 
floor beneath their feet, shook and trembled and 
quivered without cessation. And also without 



202 BETWEEN THE LINES 

pause the uproar of battle bellowed and 
shrieked and pounded in their ears. Shells 
were streaming overhead, the closer ones with 
a rush and a whoop, the higher and heavier 
ones with long whistling sighs and screams. 
Shells exploding near them crashed thunder- 
ously and set the whole building rocking more 
violently than ever. The rifle and machine- 
gun fire never ceased, but rose and fell, sink- 
ing at times to a rapid spluttering crackle, 
rising again to a booming drum-like roll. The 
banging reports of bombs and grenades punc- 
tuated sharply the running roar of gun and 
rifle fire. 

Through all the whirlwind of noise the doc- 
tors worked steadily. Unheeding the noise, 
the dust, the heat, the trembling of the crazy 
building, they worked from dawn to noon, and 
from noon on again to dusk, only pausing for 
a few minutes at mid-day to swallow beef -tea 
and a biscuit, and in the afternoon to drink 
tepid tea. Early in the afternoon a light shell 
struck a corner of the roof, making a clean hole 
on entry and blowing out the other side in a 
clattering gust of flame and smoke, broken 
tiles and splintering wood. The room filled 
with choking smoke and dust and bitter blind- 
ing fumes, and a shower of dirt and fragments 



THE COST 203 

rained down on the floor and table, on the doc- 
tors, and on the men lying round the walls. 
At the first crash and clatter some of the 
wounded cried out sharply, but one amongst 
them chided the others, asking had they never 
heard a Fizz-Bang before, and what would the 
Doctor be thinking of them squealing there 
like a lot of schoolgirls at a mouse in the 
room? But later in the day there was a worse 
outcry and a worse reason for it. The second 
room was being emptied, the wounded being 
carried out to the ambulances that awaited 
them close by outside. There came suddenly 
out of the surrounding din of battle four quick 
ear-filling rushes of sound — sh-sh-sh-shoosh — 
ba-ba-babang ! The shells had passed over no 
more than clear of the cottage, and burst in the 
air just beyond, and for an instant the 
stretcher-bearers halted hesitatingly and the 
wounded shrank on their stretchers. But next 
instant the work was resumed, and was in full 
swing when a minute later there came again 
the four wind-rushes, followed this time by 
four shattering crashes, an appalling clatter 
of whirling tiles and brick-work. The cottage 
disappeared in swirling clouds of smoke and 
brick-dust, and out of the turmoil came shrieks 
and cries and groans. When the dust had 



204 BETWEEN THE LINES 

cleared it showed one end of the cottage com- 
pletely wrecked, the roof gone, the walls gap- 
ing in ragged rents, the end wall collapsed in 
jumbled ruins. Inside the room was no more 
than a shambles. There were twenty odd men 
in it when the shells struck. Seven were car- 
ried out alive and four of these died in the 
moving. In the other room, where the two 
doctors worked, no damage was done beyond 
the breakdown of a portion of the partition 
wall, and there was only one further casualty 
— a man who was actually having a slight 
hand-wound examined at the moment. He was 
killed instantly by a shell fragment which 
whizzed through the doorway. The two doc- 
tors, after a first hasty examination of the new 
casualties, held a hurried consultation. The 
obvious thing to do was to move, but the ques- 
tion was, Where to? One place after another 
was suggested, only for the suggestion to be 
dismissed for some good and adequate reason. 
In the middle of the discussion a fresh torrent 
of casualties began to pour in. Some plainly 
required immediate attention, and the doctors 
fell to work again. By the time the rush was 
cleared the question of changing position had 
been forgotten, or, at any rate, was dropped. 



THE COST 205 

The wounded continued to arrive, and the doc- 
tors continued to work. 

By now, late afternoon, the fortunes of the 
fight were plainly turning in favor of the 
British. It was extraordinary the difference 
it made in the whole atmosphere — to the doc- 
tors, the orderlies, the stretcher-bearers, and 
even — or, rather, most of all — to the wounded 
who were coming in. In the morning the 
British attack had been stubbornly withstood, 
and thousands of men had fallen in the first 
rushes to gain a footing in the trenches oppo- 
site. The wounded who were first brought in 
were the men who had fallen in these rushes, 
in the forward trench, in the communication 
trenches on their way up from the support 
trench, and from the shell fire on the support 
trenches. Because they themselves had made 
no advance, or had seen no advance made, 
they believed the attack was a failure, that 
thousands of men had fallen and no ground 
had been gained. The stretcher-bearers who 
brought them in had a similar tale to tell, and 
everyone looked glum and pulled a long face. 
About noon, although the advance on that par- 
ticular portion was still hung up, a report ran 
that success had been attained elsewhere along 
the line. In the early afternoon the guns be- 



206 BETWEEN THE LINES 

hind burst out in a fresh paroxysm of fury, 
and the shells poured streaming overhead and 
drenched the enemy trenches ahead with a new 
and greater deluge of fire. The rifle fire and 
the bursting reports of bombs swelled sudden- 
ly to the fullest note yet attained. All these 
things were hardly noted, or at most were 
heeded with a half-attention, back in the 
dressing station, but it was not long before 
the fruits of the renewed activity began to fil- 
ter and then to flood back to the doctors ' hands. 
But now a new and more encouraging tale 
came with them. We were winning ... we were 
advancing ... we were into their trenches all 
along the line. The casualties bore their 
wounds to the station with absolute cheerful- 
ness. This one had "got it" in the second line 
of trenches; that one had seen the attack 
launched on the third trench; another had 
heard we had taken the third in our stride and 
were pushing on hard. The regiment had had 
a hammering, but they were going good; the 
battalion had lost the O.C. and a heap of offi- 
cers, but they were "in wi' the bayonet" at 
last. So the story ran for a full two hours. It 
was borne back by men with limbs and bodies 
hacked and broken and battered, but with lips 
smiling and babbling words of triumph. There 



THE COST 207 

were some who would never walk, would never 
stand upright again, who had nothing before 
them but the grim life of a helpless cripple. 
There were others who could hardly hope to see 
the morrow's sun rise, and others again grey- 
faced with pain and with white-knuckled hands 
clenched to the stretcher-edges. But all, 
slightly wounded, or "serious," or "danger- 
ous," seemed to have forgotten their own bit- 
ter lot, to have no thought but to bear back the 
good word that "we're winning." 

Late in the afternoon the weary doctors 
sensed a slackening in the flowing tide of casu- 
alties. They were still coming in, being 
attended to and passed out in a steady stream, 
but somehow there seemed less rush, less 
urgency, less haste on the part of the bearers 
to be back for a fresh load. And — ominous 
sign — there were many more of the bearers 
themselves coming back as casualties. The 
reason for these things took little finding. The 
fighting line was now well advanced, and 
every yard of advance meant additional time 
and risk in the bearing back of the wounded. 

One of the regimental stretcher-bearers put 
the facts bluntly and briefly to the doctors: 
"The open ground an' the communication 
trenches is fair hummin' wi' shells an' bullets. 



208 BETWEEN THE LINES 

We're just about losin' two bearers for every 
one casualty we bring out. Now we're leavin' 
'em lie there snug as we can till dark." 

A chaplain came in and asked permission to 
stay there. "One of my regiments has gone 
up," he said, "and they'll bring the casualties 
in here. I won't get in your way, and I may 
be able to help a little. Here is one of my men 
now." 

A stretcher was carried in and laid with its 
burden under the doctors' hands. The man 
was covered with wounds from head to foot. 
He lay still while the doctors cut the clothing 
off him and adjusted bandages, but just before 
they gave him morphia he spoke, "Don't let 
me die, doctor," he said; "for Christ's sake, 
don't let me die. I> t say I'm going to die." 
His eye met the ch«. ruain 's, and the grey head 
stooped near to the young one. "I'm the only 
one left, padre," he said. "My old mother. 
. . . Don't let me die, padre. You know how 
— it is, back home. Don't — let me — die — too." 

But the lad was past saving. He died there 
on the table under their hands. 

"God help his mother!" said the chaplain 
softly. "It was her the boy was thinking of — 
not himself. His father was killed yesterday 
— old Jim Doherty, twenty-three years' ser- 



THE COST 209 

vice ; batman to the O.C. ; would come out again 
with young Jim and Walt. Been with the 
Regiment all his life; and the Regiment has 
taken him and his two boys, and left the mother 
to her old age without husband or chick or 
child." 

The two doctors were lighting cigarettes 
and inhaling the smoke deeply, with the en- 
joyment that comes after hours without to- 
bacco. 

Another man was borne in. He was grimed, 
with dust and dirt, and smeared with blood. 
The sweats of agony beaded his forehead, but 
he grinned a twisted grin at the doctors and 
chaplain. "An' 'ere we are again, as the song 
says," he said, as the stretcher was laid down. 
"This makes the third time wounded in this 
war — twice 'ome an' out again. But this is 
like to be the last trip, I'm thinkin'. Wot 
about it, sir? Will I be losin' 'em both?" And 
he looked down at his smashed legs. "Ah, I 
thought so," he went on. "I'm a market 
gardener, but I dunno 'ow I'm goin' to market- 
garden without legs. Four kids too, the eldest 
six years, an' an ailin' wife. But she'll 'ave 
me, or wot's left o' me; an' that's more'n a 
many '11 'ave." 

"That'll be all right, my lad," said the chap- 



210 BETWEEN THE LINES 

lain. " You '11 have a pension. The country- 
will look after you." 

"Ah, padre — I didn't see you, sir. The 
country? Arst my brother Joe about the 
country. Wounded in South Africa 'e was, an' 
never done a day's work since. An' the pen- 
sion 'as been barely enough to starve on 
decently. It'll be the same again arter all this 
is over I don't doubt. Any'ow that's 'ow we 
all feels about it. No, sir, I don't feel no great 
pain to speak of. Sort of numb-like below 
there just." 

He went on talking quite rationally and 
composedly until he was taken away. 

After that there was another pause, and the 
ambulances, for the first time that day, were 
able to get the station cleared before a fresh 
lot came in. The dusk was closing in, but there 
was still no abatement of the sounds of battle. 

1 ' There must be crowds of men lying out in 
front there wanting attention," said the cap- 
tain, reaching for his coat and putting it on 
quietly. "You might stay here, Dewar, and 
I'll have a look out and see if there's a chance 
of getting forward to give a hand." 

The other doctor offered to go if the other 
would wait, but his offer was quietly put aside. 
"I'll get back in an hour or two," the captain 



THE COST 211 

said, and went off. Dewar and the chaplain 
stood in the door and watched him go. A 
couple of heavy shells crashed down on the 
parapet of the communication trench he was 
moving toward, and for a minute his figure was 
hidden by the swirling black smoke and yellow 
dust. But they saw him a moment later as he 
reached the trench, turned and waved a hand to 
them, and disappeared. 

"His name's Macgillivray, ' ' said the doctor, 
in answer to a question from the chaplain. 
"One of the finest fellows I've ever met, and 
one of the cleverest surgeons in Great Bri- 
tain. He is recognised as one of the best al- 
ready, and he's only beginning. Did you 
notice him at work? The most perfect hands, 
and an eye as quick and keen as an eagle's. 
He misses nothing — sees little things in a flash 
where twenty men might pass them. He's a 
wonder. ' ' 

And Macgillivray was moving slowly along 
the communication trench that led to the for- 
ward fire trench. It was a dangerous passage, 
because the enemy's guns had the position and 
range exactly and were keeping a constant fire 
on the trench, knowing the probability of the 
supports using it. In fact the supports moving 
up had actually abandoned the use of the ap- 



212 BETWEEN THE LINES 

proach trenches and were hurrying across the 
open for the most part. Macgillivray, reluc- 
tant at first to abandon the cover of the trench, 
was driven at last to doing so by a fact forced 
upon him at every step that the place was a 
regular shell-trap. Sections of it were blown 
to shapeless ruins, and pits and mounds of 
earth and the deep shell-craters gaped in it 
and to either side for all its length. Even 
where the high-explosive shells had not fallen 
the shrapnel had swept and the clouds of flies 
that swarmed at every step told of the blood- 
soaked ground, even where the torn fragments 
of limbs and bodies had not been left, as they 
were in many places. 

So Macgillivray left the trench and scurried 
across the open with bullets hissing and buzzing 
about his ears and shells roaring overhead. He 
reached the forward fire trench at last and 
halted there to recover his breath. The bat- 
tered trench was filled with the men who had 
been moved up in support, and there were many 
wounded amongst them. He busied himself 
for half an hour amongst them, and then pre- 
pared to move on across the open to what had 
been the enemy's front-line trench. It was 
dusk now and shadowy figures could be seen 
coming back towards the British lines. At 



THE COST 213 

one point, a dip in the ground and an old ditch 
gave some cover from the flying bullets. 
Towards this point along what had been the 
face and was now the back of the enemy front 
trench, and then in along the line of the hol- 
low, a constant procession of wounded moved 
slowly. It was easy to distinguish them, and 
even to pick out in most cases where they were 
wounded, because in the dusk the bandages of 
the first field dressing showed up startlingly 
white and clear on the shadowy forms against 
the shadowy background. Some, with the 
white patches on heads, arms, hands, and upper 
bodies, were walking; others, with the white 
on feet and legs, limped and hobbled painfully, 
leaning on the parapet or using their rifles 
crutch- wise; and others lay on the stretchers 
that moved with desperate slowness towards 
safety. The line appeared unending; the dim 
figures could be seen trickling along the para- 
pets as far as the eye could distinguish them; 
the white dots of the bandages were visible 
moving as far along the parapet as the sight 
could reach. 

Macgillivray moved out from the broken 
trench and hurried across the open. There 
were not more than fifty yards to cross, but in 
that narrow space the bodies lay huddled 



214 BETWEEN THE LINES 

singly and heaped in little clumps. They re- 
minded one exactly of the loafers who sprawl 
asleep and sunning themselves in the Park on 
a Sunday afternoon. Only the dead lay in 
that narrow strip ; the living had been moved or 
I i.id moved themselves long since. Macgillivray 
pushed on into the trench, along it to a com- 
munication trench, and up and down one alley 
after another, until he reached the most 
advanced trench which the British held. Here 
a pandemonium of fighting was still in prog- 
ress, but to this Macgillivray after the first 
couple of minutes paid no heed. A private 
with a bullet through his throat staggered 
back from his loophole and collapsed in the 
doctor's arms; and after that Macgillivray had 
his hands too full with casualties to concern 
himself with the fighting. Several dug-outs 
had been filled with wounded, and the doctor 
crawled about amongst these and along the 
trench, applying dressings and bandages as 
fast as he could work, seeing the men placed on 
stretchers or sent back as quickly as possible 
towards the rear. He stayed there until a mes v - 
Bage reached him by one of the stretcher-bear- 
ers who had been back to the dressing station 
that he was badly needed there, and that Mr. 



THE COST 215 

Dewar hoped he would get back soon to help 
them. 

Certainly the dressing station was having a 
busy time. The darkness had made it possible 
to get back hundreds of casualties from places 
whence tlicy dare not be moved by day. They 
were pouring into the station through the doc- 
tors' hands — three of them were hard at work 
there by this time — and out again to the ambu- 
lances as rapidly as they could be handled. 
Despite the open, shell-wrecked end and the 
broken roof, the cottage was stiflingly close; and 
sultry, the heavy scent of blood hung sicken- 
ingly in the stagnant air, and the whole place 
swarmed with pestering flies. There was no 
time to do much for the patients. All had been 
more or less efficiently bandaged by the regi- 
mental stretcher-bearers who picked them up. 
The doctors did little more than examine the 
bandagings, loosening these and tightening 
those, making injections to ward off tetanus, 
performing an operation or an amputation now 
and again in urgent cases, sorting out occasion- 
ally a hopeless casualty where a wound was 
plainly mortal, and setting him aside to leave 
room in the ambulances for those the hospitals 
below might yet save. 

One of these mortal cases was a young lieu- 



216 BETWEEN THE LINES 

tenant. He knew himself that there was little 
or no hope for him, but he smoked a cigarette 
and spoke with composure, or simulated com- 
posure, to the doctor and the chaplain. 

''Hello, padre,' ' he said, "looks like a wash- 
out for me this time. You'll have to break it 
to the pater, you know. Afraid he'll take it 
rather hard too. Bough luck, isn't it, doc. I But 
then ..." His face twitched with pain, but he 
covered the break in his voice by blowing a long 
cloud of smoke. ". . . After all, it's all in the 
game, y ' know. " " All in the game, ' ' the chap- 
lain said when he had gone ; " a cruel game, but 
gallantly played out. And he's the fourth son 
to go in this war — and the last male of his line 
except his father, the old earl. A family that 
has made its mark on a good few history pages 
— and this is the end of it. You think it 's quite 
hopeless for him, doctor?" 

The doctor looked up in surprise from the 
fresh slightly wounded case he was overhaul- 
ing. ' ' Hopeless ? Why, it 's not even — Oh ! him? 
Yes, I'm afraid so. ... I wish Macgillivray 
would come back, ' ' he went on irritably. ' ' He 's 
worth the three of us here put together. Where 
we have to fiddle and probe and peer he would 
just look — just half shut those hawk eyes of his 
and look, and he'd know exactly what to do and 



THE COST 217 

what not to do. . . . That'll do, sergeant; take 
him off. . . . Where's that bottle of mine 1 ? 
What's this? Hand? Bandage not hurting 
you? All right. Pass him over there for the 
anti-tetanus. Now, then! ..." 

A burly private, with the flesh of his thigh 
showing clear white where the grimy khaki had 
been cut clear and hung flapping, limped in and 
pushed forward a neatly bandaged limb for 
inspection. "A doctor did that up in the 
trenches," he remarked. "Said to tell you 'e 
did it an' it was all right, an' I only needed the 
anti-tempus an' a ticket for 'ome." 

" That's Macgillivray, I'll bet," said young 
Dewar. "Where was this?" 

"Fourth German trench, sir," said the man 
cheerfully. "You know we got four? Four 
trenches took! We're winnin' this time orright. 
Fairly got 'em goin', I b'lieve. It'll be Glori- 
ous Vict'ry in the 'eadlines to-morrow." 

"Things like this, you know, must be," 
quoted the chaplain softly, as another badly 
wounded man was brought in. "I wonder what 
the victory is costing us?" 

' ' Never mind. It 's costing t 'other side more, 
sir," said the casualty grimly, and then shut 
lips and teeth tight on the agony that followed. 
1 1 1 wish Macgillivray would come, ' ' said Dewar 



218 BETWEEN THE LINES 

when that was finished. "He could have done 
it so much better. It's just the sort of case he's 
at his best on — and his best is something the 
medical journals write columns about. I wish 
he'd come." 

And then, soon after, he did come — came on 
a stretcher with a bandage about his head and 
over his eyes. " Macgillivray ! " cried the 
young doctor, and stood a moment staring, with 
his jaw dropped. 

"Yes," said Macgillivray with lips tight 
drawn. "It's me. That's Dewar, isn't it? No 
need to undo the bandage, Dewar. It's my 
eyes — both gone — a bullet through them both. 
And I'll never hold a lancet again. You can 
give me some morphia, Dewar — and send me on 
to the ambulance out of the way. I'm no good 
here now — or anywhere else, now or ever. I 
won't die, I know, but " 

They gave him the morphia, and before he 
slid off into unconsciousness he spoke a last 
word to the chaplain : ' ' You were right, padre. 
You remember ... it's the women pay the 
hardest. ... I'm thinking . . . of . . . my 
wife." 

The chaplain's thoughts went back to the 
wife and mother of the Dohertys, to the legless 
market-gardener and his ailing wife, to the boy 



THE COST 219 

lieutenant who was the last of his line, and a 
score more he knew, and his eyes followed as 
the stretcher bore out the hulk that had been a 
man who had done much to relieve pain and 
might have done so much more. 

The voice of another new-arriving casualty 
broke his thoughts. "We're winnin', doctor," 
it was saying exultantly. "All along the line 
we're winnin' this time. The Jocks has got 
right away for'ard, an' the Ghurkies is in wid 
their killin' knives on our left. An' the Irish 
is in front av all. Glory be ! 'Tis a big f oight 
this time, an' it's winnin' we are. Me good 
arm's gone I know, but I'd rather be here wid 
wan arm than annywhere else wid two. An' 
what's an arm or a man more or less in the 
world 1 We 're winnin ', I tell ye ! " 



A SMOKER'S COMPANION 

Except for the address, "No. 1, Park-lane," 
marked with a muddy forefinger on the hanging 
waterproof sheet which served as a door, there 
was nothing pretentious about the erection — it 
could not be called a building — which was for 
the time being the residence of three drivers of 
the Royal Field Artillery. But the shelter, 
ingeniously constructed of hop-poles and straw 
thatch, was more or less rain-proof, and had 
the advantage of being so close to the horse- 
lines that half a dozen strides brought the 
drivers alongside their ' ' long-nosed chums. ' ' It 
was early evening; but the horses having been 
watered and fed, the labours of their day were 
over, and the Wheel and Lead Drivers were 
luxuriating in bootless feet while they enter- 
tained the Gunner who had called in from his 
own billet in the farm's barn. 

The Gunner was holding forth on Tobacco 
Gifts. 

"It's like this, see," he said. "An' I knows 
it's so 'cos I read it myself in the paper. First 

220 



A SMOKEE'S COMPANION 221 

you cuts a coo-pon out o' the paper wi' your 
name an' address on it. . . ." 

' ' But, 'ere, 'old on, ' ' put in the Wheel Driver. 
" 'Ow does my name get on it?" 

"You write it there, fat'ead. Didjer think 
it growed there f You writes your name same 
as the paper tells, see ; an' you cuts out the coo- 
pon an' you sends sixpence for one packet o' 
'baccy. ..." 

"Wot sorter yarn you givin' us now?" said 
the Wheel Driver. "I didn't send no sixpence, 
or cut out a cow-pen. I gets this 'baccy for 
nothin'. The Quarter tole me so." 

"Course you gets it," said the Gunner 
impatiently. "But somebody must 'a' paid the 
sixpence. ..." 

"You said I paid it — an' I never did," re- 
torted the Wheel Driver. 

" 'E means," explained the Lead Driver, "if 
you was sendin' a packet of 'baccy you'd send 
sixpence. ' ' 

"Where's the sense in that?" said the Wheel 
Driver. "Why should I sen' sixpence when I 
can get this 'baccy for nothin'? I got this for 
nothin'. It's not a issue neither. It's a Gif. 
Quartermaster tole me so. ' ' 

1 ' We know that, ' ' said -the Gunner ; ' ' but if 
you wanted to you could send sixpence. ..." 



222 BETWEEN THE LINES 

"I could not," said the Wheel Driver em- 
phatically. "I 'aven't seed a sixpence since we 
lef' 'ome. They even pays us in bloomin' 
French bank notes. An' how I'm goin' to tell, 
after this war's over, whether my pay's in 
credit " 

"Oh, shut it!" interrupted the Lead Driver. 
" Let's 'ear 'ow this Gift thing's worked. Go 
on, chum." 

"It T s this way, see," the Gunner took up his 
tale anew. "S'pose you wants to send a gift 
... or mebbe you'll unnerstan' this way bet- 
ter. S'pose your best gel wants to sen' you a 
gift. . ." 

"I ain't got no bes' gel," objected the Wheel 
Driver. "I'm a married man, an' you knows 
it too." 

The Gunner took a deep breath and looked 
hard at the objector. "Well," he said, with 
studied calm, "we'll s'pose your missis at 'ome 
there wants to sen' you out some smokes. . . ." 

"An' s'pose she does want to?" said the 
Wheel Driver truculently. "Wot's it got to do 
wi' you, anyway?" 

With lips pursed tight and in stony silence 
the Gunner glared at him, and then, turning his 
shoulder, addressed himself deliberately to the 
Lead Driver. 



A SMOKER'S COMPANION 223 

"S'pose your missis . . ."he began, but got 
no further. 

"He ain't got no missis; leastways, 'e ain't 
suppose to 'ave," the Wheel Driver interjected 
triumphantly. 

That fact was well known to the Gunner, but 
had been forgotten by him in the stress of the 
moment. He ignored the interruption, and 
proceeded smoothly. "S'pose your missis, if 
you 'ad one, w'ich you 'aven't, as I well knows, 
seein' me 'n' you walked out two sisters at 
Woolwich up to the larst night we was 
there. ..." 

The Wheel Driver chuckled. 

"Thought you was on guard the las' night 
we was in Woolwich, ' ' he said. 

"Will you shut your 'ead an' speak when 
you're spoke to?" said the Gunner angrily. 

"Never mind 'im, chum. Wot about this 
Gif business V 9 

"Well," said the Gunner, picking his words 
carefully. "If a man's wife or gel or sister or 
friend wants to send 'im some smokes they cuts 
this coo-pon, same's I've said, an' sends it up 
to the paper, wi' sixpence an' the reg 'mental 
number an' name of the man the gift's to go to. 
An' the paper buys the 'baccy, gettin' it cheap 
becos o' buyin' tons an' tons, an' sends a packet 



224 BETWEEN THE LINES 

out wi' the chap's number an' name and reg'- 
ment wrote on it. So 'e gets it. An' that's 
all." 

The "Wheel Driver could contain himself no 
longer. "An' how d'you reckon I got this 
packet, an' no name or number on it — 'cept a 
pos'card wi' a name an' address wrote on as I 
never 'eard before?" 

"Becos some good-'earted bloke in Blighty 
that doesn't 'ave no pal particular out 'ere asks 
the paper to send 'is packet o' 'baccy to the 
O.C. to pass on to some pore 'ard-up orphin 
Tommy that ain't got no 'baccy nor no fren's 
to send 'im like, an' 'e issues it to you." 

"It ain't a issue," persisted the Wheel 
Driver. "It's a Gif. The Quarter sed so 
'isself." 

Splashing and squelching footsteps were 
heard outside, the door-curtain swung aside, 
and the Centre Driver ducked in, took off a 
soaking cap, and jerked a glistening spray off 
it into the darkness. 

"Another fair soor of a night," he remarked 
cheerfully, slipping out of his mackintosh and 
hanging the streaming garment in the door. 
"Bust me if I know where all the rain comes 
from. ' ' 

"Any luck?" asked the Lead Driver, leaning 



A SMOKER'S COMPANION 225 

over to rearrange the strip of cloth which, stuck 
in a jam- tin of fat, provided what — with some 
imagination — might be called a light. 

"Five packets — twenty-five fags," said the 
Centre Driver. " There was two or three 
wantin' to swap the 'baccy in their packets for 
the fags in the other chaps', so I done pretty 
well to get five packets for mine. ' ' 

11 'Twould 'a' paid you better to 'ave kep' 
your 'baccy and made fags out o' it wi' cig'- 
rette papers," said the Wheel Driver. 

"Mebbe," agreed the Centre Driver. "An' 
p'raps you'll tell me — not being a Maskelyne 
an' Cook conjurer meself — 'ow I'm to produce 
the fag-papers." 

The Gunner chuckled softly. 

"You should 'a' done like old Pint-o'-Bass 
did, time we was on the Aisne, ' ' he said. ' ' Bass 
is one of them fag-fiends that can't live without 
a cigarette, and wouldn't die happy if he 
wasn't smokin' one. 'E breathes more smoke 
than 'e does air, an' 'e ought to 'ave a perma- 
nent chimney-sweep detailed to clear the soot 
out of 'is lungs an' breathin' toobs. But if 
Pint-o'-Bass does smoke more'n is good for 'im 
or any other respectable factory chimney, I'll 
admit the smoke 'asn't sooted up 'is intelleck 
none, an' e' can wriggle 'is way out of a hole 



226 BETWEEN THE LINES 

where a double- jointed snake 'ud stick. An' 
durin' the Eetreat, when, as you knows, cig- 
arettes in the Expeditionary Force was 
scarcer 'n snowballs in 'ell, ole Pint-o'-Bass 
managed to carry on, an' wasn't never seen 
without 'is fag, excep' at meal-times, an' sleep- 
times, an' they bein' so infrequent an' sketchy- 
like, them days, wasn't 'ardly worth countin'. 
'Twas like this, see, that 'e managed it. You'll 
remember that, when we mobilised, some Lost 
Dogs' 'Ome or Society for Preventin' Christian 
Knowledge, or something, rushes up a issue o' 
pocket Testaments an' dishes out one to every- 
body in the Battery. Bound in a khaki cover 
they was, an', comin' in remarkable 'andy as a 
nice sentimental sort o' keepsake, most of 'em 
stayed be'ind wi' sweet 'earts an' wives. Them 
as didn't must 'ave gone into 'Base kit,' cos 
any'ow there wasn't one to be raked out o' the 
Battery later on excep' the one that Pint-o'- 
Bass was carryin'. Bein' pocket Testaments, 
they was made o' the thinnest kind o' paper 
an' Bass tole me the size worked out exactly 
right at two fags to the page. 'E started on 
the Creation just about the time o' Mons, an' 
by the time we'd got back to the Aisne 'e was 
near through Genesis. All the time we was 
workin' up thro' France again Bass's smokes 



A SMOKER'S COMPANION 227 

were workin' down through Exodus, an' 'e be- 
gun to worry about whether the Testament 
would carry 'im through the campaign. The 
other fellers that 'ad their tongues 'anging out 
for a fag uster go'n borrow a leaf off o' Bass 
whenever they could raise a bit o ' baccy, but at 
last Bass shut down on these loans. 'Where's 
your own Testament?' he'd say. 'You was 
served out one same as me, wasn't you? Lot o' 
irreligious wasters! Get a Bible give you an' 
can't take the trouble to carry it. You'd ha' 
sold them Testaments at a sixpence a sack in 
Woolwich if there 'd been buyers at that price 
— which there weren't. An' now you comes 
beggin' a page o' mine. I ain't goin' to give no 
more. Encouragin' thriftlessness, as the Adju- 
tant 'ud call it; an', besides, 'ow do I know 'ow 
long this war's goin' to last or when I'll see a 
fag or a fag-paper again? I'll be smoking 
Deuteronomy an' Kings long afore we're over 
the Ehine, an' mebbe,' he sez, turnin' over the 
pages with 'is thumb an' tearin' out the Chil- 
dren of Israel careful by the roots, 'mebbe I'll 
be reduced to smokin' the inscription, 'To our 
Dear Soldier Friend,' on the fly-leaf afore I 
gets a chance to loot some 'baccy shop in Ber- 
lin. No,' 'e sez. 'No. You go'n smoke a 
corner o' the Petit Journal, an' good enough for 



228 BETWEEN THE LINES 

you, improvident sacriligeous blighters, you — 
givin' away your own good Testaments.' 

"Young Soapy, o' the Centre Section, 'im 
that was struck off the strength at Wipers later 
through stoppin' a Coal-Box, tried to come the 
artful, an' 'ad the front to 'alt the Division 
padre one day an ' ask 'im if 'e 'd any spares o ' 
pocket Testaments in store, makin' out 'e'd lost 
'is through lendin' it to 'is Number One, who 
had gone 'Missin'.' Soapy made out 'e 
couldn't sleep in 'is bed at night — which wasn't 
sayin' much, seein' we mostly slep' in our seats 
or saddles them nights — becos 'e hadn't read a 
chapter o' the Testament first. An' the old sky- 
pilot was a little bit surprised — he'd 'a bin 
more surprised if 'e knew Soapy as well as I 
did — an' a heap pleased, and most of all bowed 
down wi' grief becos 'e 'adn't no Testament 
that was supernumary to War Establishment, 
and so couldn't issue one to Soapy. But two 
days later 'e comes 'unting for Soapy, as 
pleased as a dog wi' two tails, an' smilin' as 
glad as if 'e'd just converted the Kaiser; an' 'e 
lugs out a big Bible 'e 'd bought in a village we'd 
just passed through, an' writes Soapy 's name 
on the fly-leaf an' presents it to 'im, and tells 
'im 'e'll come an' 'ave a chat any time 'e's near 
the Battery. The Bible was none o' your fid- 



A SMOKER'S COMPANION 229 

dlin' pocket things, but a good substantial one, 
wi' pitchers o' Moses in the Bulrushes an' 
Abraham scarifyin' 'is son, an' such like. An' 
the leaves was that thick that Soapy might as 
well 'ave smoked brown paper or the Petit 
Journal. But that wasn't the worst of it. 
Soapy chucked it over the first 'edge soon as 
the padre 'ad gone, but next day the padre rolls 
up and tells Soapy a Sapper 'ad picked it up 
and brought it to 'im — 'im 'avin' signed 'is 

name an' rank after "Presented by " on 

the fly-leaf. An' 'e warns Soapy to be more 
careful, and 'elps 'im stow it in 'is 'aversack, 
where it took up most the room an' weighed 
a ton, an ' left Soapy to distribute 'is bully beef 
an' biscuits an' cheese an' spare socks and 
cetera in all the pockets 'e 'ad. An' even then 
poor Soapy wasn't finished, for every time the 
padre got a chance 'e'd 'op round an' 'ave a 
chat, as 'e called it, wi' Soapy, the chat being a 
cross-examination worse 'n a Court-Martial on 
what chapter Soapy 'ad been readin', an' full 
explanations of same. Soapy was drove at last 
to readin' a chapter, so 'e could make out 'e 
savvied something of it." 

The Gunner tapped out his pipe on the heel 
of his hand and began to re-fill it. 

"If you'll believe me," he said, "that padre 



230 BETWEEN THE LINES 

got poor Soapy pinned down so he was readin' 
near a chapter a day — which shows the 'orrible 
results that can come o' a little bit of simple 
deception. ' ' 

"An* how is Pint-o'-Bass gom' on wi' his 
Testament?' ' asked the Lead Driver. 

11 'E don't need to smoke it, now we're in 
these fixed positions an' getting liberal supplies 
from these people that sends up to the papers' 
Tobacco Funds. But 'e's savin' up the rest of 
it. Reckons that when we get the Germans on 
the run again the movin ' will be at the trot can- 
ter an' gallop, same's before; an' the cigarette 
supplies won't be able to keep up the pace. An' 
besides, 'e sez, 'e reckons it's only a fair thing 
to smoke a cig'rette made wi' the larst chapter 
down the Unter den Linden the day Peace is 
declared. ' ' 



THE JOB OF THE AM.COL. 

The wide door of the barn creaked open and 
admitted a swirl of sleety snow, a gust of bitter 
cold wind, and the Bombardier. A little group 
of men round a guttering candle-lamp looked 
up. 

" Hello, Father Christmas," said the Centre 
Driver. ' ' You 're a bit late for your proper day, 
but we'll let you off that if you fill our stockin's 
up proper." 

"Wipe yer feet careful on the mat," said the 
Lead Driver, "an' put yer umb'rella in the 'all 
stand." 

11 'Ere, don't go shakin' that snow all over 
the straw," said the Wheel Driver indignantly. 
"I'm goin' to sleep there presently an' the 
straw's damp enough as it is." 

"Glad you're so sure about sleepin' there," 
the Bombardier said, divesting himself of his 
bandolier and struggling out of his snow-cov- 
ered coat. "By the look o' things, it's quite on 
the cards you get turned out presently an' have 
to take up some pills to the guns. ' ' 

"Pretty busy to-night, ain't they?" said the 

231 



232 BETWEEN THE LINES 

Centre Driver. "We heard 'em bumpin' away 
good-oh. ' ' 

" You don't 'ear the 'alf of it back 'ere," said 
the Bombardier. " Wind's bio win' most o' the 
row away. They're goin' it hot an' strong. 
Now where's my mess-tin got to? Aren't 'ad 
no tea yet, an' it's near eight o'clock. I'm just 
about froze through too." 

"Here y'are," said the Centre Driver, throw- 
ing a mess-tin over. "An' the cook kep' tea 
hot for you an' the rest that was out." 

"Pull that door shut be'ind you," said the 
Wheel Driver. "This barn's cold as a ice-'ouse 
already, an' the roof leaks like a broke sieve. 
Billet! Strewth, it ain't 'arf a billet!" 

The Bombardier returned presently with a 
mess-tin of "raw" (milkless and sugarless) tea 
and proceeded to make a meal off that, some 
stone-hard biscuits and the scrapings of a pot 
of jam. 

"What sort o' trip did you 'ave?" asked the 
Centre Driver. "Anyways peaceful, or was 
you dodgin' the Coal-Boxes this time?" 

1 ' Not a Coal-Box, or any other box, ' ' said the 
Bombardier, hammering a biscuit to fragments 
with a rifle-butt. "An' I 'aven't 'ad a shell drop 
near me for a week. ' ' 

"If we keeps on like this," said the Centre 



THE JOB OF THE AM. COL. 233 

Driver, "we'll get fancyin' we're back on 
Long Valley man-oovers." 

"Wot you grousin' about anyway?" re- 
marked the Wheel Driver. ' ' This is a Ammuni- 
tion Column, ain't it? Or d'you s'pose it's an 
Am. Col's bizness to go chasin' after bombard- 
ments an' shell-fire. If you ain't satisfied 
you'd better try'n get transferred to the 
trenches. ' ' 

"Or if that's too peaceful for you," put in 
the Lead Driver, "you might apply to be sent 
to England where the war's ragin' an' the Zep- 
pelins is killin' wimmin an' window-panes." 

"Talkin' o' transferring to the trenches," 
said the Bombardier putting down his empty 
mess-tin and producing his pipe, "reminds me 
o' a Left'nant we 'ad join us a month or two 
back. It was the time you chaps was away 
attached to that other Division, so you didn't 
know 'im. 'E'd bin with a Battery right 
through, but 'e got a leave an' when 'e come 
back from England 'e was sent to us. 'Is bat- 
man l tole me 'e was a bit upset at first about 
bein' cut adrift from 'is pals in the Battery but 
'e perked up an' reckoned 'e was goin' to 'ave 
things nice an' cushy for a bit. An' 'e as much 
as says so himself to me the first time 'e was 

Servant. 



234 BETWEEN THE LINES 

takin' ammunition up an' I was along with 'im. 
I'd been doin' orderly at the Battery an' 
brought down the requisition for so many 
rounds, an' it bein' the Left'nant's first trip 
up, an' not knowin' the road 'e 'as me up in 
front with 'im to show the way. It was an un- 
usual fine mornin', I remember, 'avin' stopped 
rainin' for almost an hour, an' just as we 
started somethin' that might 'ave been a sun 
tried 'is 'ardest to shine. Soon as we was on 
the road the Left'nant gives the word to march 
at ease, an' lights up a cig'rette 'imself. 

" 'Great mornin', ain't it, Bombardier,' 'e 
ses. 'Not more'n a foot or two o' mud on the 
roads, an' the temperature almost above freez- 
in '-point. I'm just about beginnin' to like this 
job on the Am. Col. 'Ave you bin with a Bat- 
tery out 'ere?' 

"I tole 'im yes an' came to the Column after 
bein' slightly wounded. 

" 'Well,' 'e ses, 'you knows 'ow much better 
off you are 'ere. You don't 'ave no standin' 
to the gun 'arf the night in the rain, an' live all 
the rest o' the nights an' all the days in a dirty, 
muddy, stuffy funk-'ole. That's the one thing 
I'm most glad to be out of,' 'e ses. 'Livin' 
under the ground, like a rabbit in a burrow with 
every chance of 'avin' 'is 'ead blowed off if 'e 



THE JOB OF THE AM. COL. 235 

looks up over the edge. I've 'ad enough o' dug- 
outs an' observin' from the trenches an' Coal- 
Box dodgin' to last me a bit, an' it's a pleasant 
change to be ridin' a decent 'orse on a most 
indecent apology for a road, an' not a Jack 
Johnson, in sight, even if they are in 'earing.' 

" 'E made several more remarks like that 
durin' the mornin', an' of course I agreed with 
'im. I mostly does agree with an officer an' 
most especial a young 'un. If you don't, 'e 
always thinks 'e's right an' you're just that 
much big a fool not to know it. An' the younger 
'e is, the more right 'e is, an' the bigger fool 
you or anyone else is. 

"Well, the Left'nant's enthoosy-ism cools off 
a bit when it begins to rain again like as if 
someone had turned on the tap o' a waterfall, 
but he tried to cheer himself remarkin' that 
most likely 'is Battery was bein' flooded out of 
their dug-outs. But I could see he was begin- 
nin' to doubt whether the Am. Col.'s job was as 
cushy as he'd reckoned when the off-lead o' 
Number One waggon tries a cross-Channel- 
swim act in one of them four-foot deep ditches. 
The waggons 'ad to pull aside to let some 
transport motor-lorries past an' One's off-lead 
that was a new .'orse just come to the Column 
from Base Eemounts an' had some objections 



236 BETWEEN THE LINES 

to motor-lorries hootin' in his ear an' scrapin' 
past a eighth of an inch from his nose — 'e side- 
slipped into the ditch. 'E stood there wi' the 
water up to 'is shoulder an' the lead driver 
lookin' down on 'im an' repeatin' rapid-fire 
prayers over 'im. I may say it took the best 
bit o' half an hour to get that blighter on to 
the road again an' the Left'nant prancin' round 
an' sayin' things a parrot would blush to re- 
peat. But 'e did more than say things, an' I'm 
willin' to admit it. 'E got down off his horse 
an' did 'is best to coax the off -lead out wi' kind 
words an' a ridin' cane. An' when they missed 
fire an' we got a drag-rope round the silly brute 
the Left'nant laid 'old an' muddied himself up 
wi' the rest. We 'ad to dig down the bank a 
bit at last an' hook a team on the drag-rope, 
an' we pulled that 'orse out o' the mud like 
pullin' a cork from a bottle. It was rainin' in 
tons all this time an' I fancy the Left'nant's 
opinion o' the Am. Col.'s job had reined back 
another pace or two, especially as he'd slipped 
an' come down full length in the mud when 
haulm' on the drag-rope, an' had also slid one 
leg in the ditch well over the boot-top in reach- 
in' out for a good swipe wi' the cane. 

"We plods off again at last, an' presently we 
begins to get abreast o' some position where 



THE JOB OF THE AM. COL. 237 

one o' our big siege guns was beltin' away. A 
bit further on, the road took a turn an' the 
siege gun's shells were roarin' along over our 
heads like an express train goin' through a 
tunnel; an' the Left'nant kept cockin' a worried 
eye round every time she banged an' presently 
'e ses sharp-like to the drivers to walk-out their 
teams and get clear of the line of fire. 

" 'If a German battery starts trying to out 
that feller,' he ses to me, 'we just about stand 
a healthy chance of meetin' an odd shell or two 
that's tryin' for the range.' 

"We had to pass through a bit of a town 
called Palloo, 1 an' just before we comes to it 
we met some teams from one of the column's 
other sections comin' back. Their officer was 
in front an' as we passed he called to the Left'- 
nant that Palloo had been shelled that mornin' 
an' the Headquarter Staff near blotted out. 

"I could just see the Left'nant chewin' this 
over as we went on, an' presently he asks me 
if it's anyways a frequent thing for us to come 
under fire takin' ammunition up. I told 'im 
about a few o' the times I'd seen it happen 
myself, an' also about how we had the airmen 

1 The identity of the town is very effectually placed beyond 
recognition by the Bombardier's and the troop's pronounciation. 



238 BETWEEN THE LINES 

an' the German guns makin' a dead set at the 
column durin' the Retreat an' shellin' us out 
o' one place after the other. 

''Before I finished it we hears the whoop o' 
a big shell an' a crash in the town, an' the 
drivers begins to look round at each other. 
Bang-bang another couple o' shells drops in 
poor old Palloo, an' the drivers begins to look 
at the Left'nant an' to finger their reins. He 
kep' on, an' of course I follows 'im an' the 
teams follows us. 

" 'I see there's a church tower in the town, 
Bombardier,' he ses. 'Does our road run 
near it?' 

"I told him we 'ad to go through the square 
where the church stood. 

" 'Then we come pretty near walkin' through 
the bull's-eye o' their target,' he ses, 'for I'll 
bet they're reckonin' on an observation post 
bein' in the tower, an' they're tryin' to out it.' 

"We got into Palloo an' it was like goin' 
through it at midnight, only wi' daylight in- 
stead of lamp-light. There wasn't an inhabitant 
to be seen, except one man peepin' up from a 
cellar gratin', an' one woman runnin' after a 
toddlin' kid that 'ad strayed out. She was 
shriekin' quick-fire French at it an' when she 
grabbed it up an' started back the kid opened 



THE JOB OF THE AM. COL. 239 

'is lungs an' near yelled the roof off. The 
woman ran into a house an' the door slammed 
an' shut off the shriekin' like liftin' the needle 
off a gramaphone disc. An' it left the main 
street most awful empty an' still wi' the jingle 
o' the teams' harness an' clatter o' the wagon 
wheels the only sounds; another few shells 
came in an' one hit a house down the street in 
front of us. We saw the slates an' the chimney 
pots fair jump in the air an' the 'ole 'ouse sort 
of collapsed in a heap an' a billowin' cloud o' 
white smoke an' dust. There was some of our 
troops hookin' a few wounded civilians out as 
we passed and the road was cluttered up wi' 
bricks an' half a door an' broken bits o' chairs 
an' tables an' crockery. Fair blew the inside 
out o' the house, that shell did. 

"When we come clear o' the town there was 
a long stretch o' clear road to cover, an' we was 
ploddin' down this when we hears the hum o' 
an airyplane. The Left'nant squints up an' 
'It's a Tawb,' he sez. 

" 'Beggin' your pardon, sir,' I told 'im, 'but 
it's a German. No mistakin' them bird-shaped 
wings an' tail. He's a German, sure enough.' 

" 'That's what I just said, Bombardier,' he 
sez, which it wasn't but I knew it was no use 
sayin' so. The airyplane swoops round an' 



240 BETWEEN THE LINES 

comes flyin' straight to us an' passed about our 
heads an' circles round to have a good look at 
us. The Left'nant was fair riled. 

" 'Dash 'is impidence,' he sez. 'If he'd 
only come a bit lower we might fetch him a 
smack;' an' he tells the gunners to get their 
rifles out. But the German knew too much to 
come close down though he flew right over us 
once or twice. 

" 'Why in thunder don't some of our guns 
have a whale at 'im,' the Left'nant says angry- 
like, 'or our airmen get up an' shoot some holes 
in 'im. He'll be droppin' a clothes-basketful o' 
bombs on my wagons presently, like as not. 
An' I can't even loose off a rifle at the bounder. 
Good Lord, that ever I should like to walk 
along a road like a tame sheep an' let a mouldy 
German chuck parcels o' bombs at me without 
me being able to do more'n shake my fist at 
'im. . . .' An' he swore most vicious. The 
airyplane flew off at last but even then the 
Left'nant wasn't satisfied. 'He'll be off back 
'ome to report this Ammunition Column on this 
particular spot on the road,' he sez, 'if he's 
not tickin' off the glad tidings on a wireless to 
'is batteries now. An' presently I suppose 
they'll start starring this road wi' high-ex- 
plosive shell. Did ever you know a wagon full 



THE JOB OF THE AM. COL. 241 

to the brim wi' lyddite being hit by a high- 
explosive, Bombardier, or hear how 'twould 
affect the column's health?' 

" 'I knew of a German column that one of 
our airyplanes dropped a bomb on, at the 
Aisne, sir,' I sez. 'I passed the place on the 
road myself soon after.' 

" 'An' what happened?' he asks, an' I told 
'im it seemed the bomb exploded the wagon it 
hit an ' the wagons exploded each other. ' That 
Ammunition Column,' I sez, 'went off like a 
packet o' crackers, one wagon after the other. 
An' when we came up, all that was left o' that 
column was a reek o' sulphur an' a hole in the 
road. ' 

" 'That's cheerful,' sez the Left'nant. 
'With us loaded down to the gunn'l wi' lyd- 
dite, an' the prospect o' being a target for every 
German gun within range o' this road.' He 
fidgetted in his saddle a bit, an' then, 'I sup- 
pose,' he sez, 'they'll calculate our pace an' 
the distance we've moved since this airman saw 
us, an' they'll shell the section o' road just 
ahead of us now to glory. I'd halt for a bit just 
to cheat 'em, for they'll shoot by the map with- 
out seein' us. But that requisition for lyddite 
was urgent, wasn't it?' 



242 BETWEEN THE LINES 

"I told him it was so, an' the Battery captain 
had told me to get it in quick to the column. 

" 'Then we'll just have to push on an' chance 
it,' sez the Left'nant, 'though I must own I do 
hate being made a helpless runnin'-deer target 
to every German gunner that likes to cocoa-nut 
shy at me. . . . Like a packet o ' crackers. . . . 
Good Lord!' 

"We plodded on, the Left'nant spurrin' his 
horse on and reinin' him back, an' cockin' his 
ear for the first shell bumpin' on the road. But 
nothin' happened, an' we heard after that a 
German flier had been brought down that day 
by our anti-aircraft guns, an' mebbe that 
dished our friend an' his report. After we 
got to the Battery wagons an' off-loaded our 
stuff, our wagons went back an' I stayed be- 
hind as orderly. The guns was goin' it that 
day an' I was sent in about sunset to get more 
ammunition. I met some more o' our wagons 
an' our other section officer comin' out, so I 
knew the Left'nant would 'ave to turn out again 
wi' the load I was goin' in for. He'd just been 
in about an hour when I reached to the column, 
an' I took the note to the farm where the offi- 
cers was billeted. There was three of 'em an' 
our Left'nant there, an' they 'ad beds o' straw 
made up nice an' comfortable on the floor of 



THE JOB OF THE AM. COL. 243 

the kitchen — you know them kitchens — a big 
cold stone-floored barn o' a place with a tiny 
stove at one end not big enough to heat a cigar- 
box. Our Left'nant 'ad 'is jacket an' boots off 
an' was pullin' 'is breeches off when I went 
in. 'I'd a rotten day,' he was sayin' when I 
hands my note in, 'but one good point about this 
Ammunition Column Job — an' the only one I 
see — is that you get the night in bed with your 
breeches off.' 

' ' But if you 'd only 'eard 'im when he found 
he was for the road again at once an' would 
spend 'is night in the rain an' dark instead of 
in bed — well, I couldn 't repeat 'is language, not 
'aving the talent to 'is extent. 

1 ' 'E was transferred to a battery soon after 
an' I 'eard that when he got the orders all 'e 
'ad to say was 'Thank 'Eaven. I'll mebbe get 
shelled oftener in a battery, but at least I'll 'ave 
the satisfaction o' shellin' back — an' I may 'ave 
a funk-hole handy to duck in when it's extry 
hot, instead o' ridin' on the road an' expectin' 
to go off like a packet o' crackers.' 

"Mebbe he was right," concluded the Bom- 
bardier reflectively. "But I s'pose it's entirely 
a matter o' taste, an' how a man likes bein' 
killed off." 



THE SIGNALLER'S DAY 

The gun detachment were curled up and doz- 
ing on the damp straw of their dug-out behind 
the gun when the mail arrived. The men had 
had an early turn-out that morning, had been 
busy serving or standing by the gun all day, and 
had been under a heavy shell fire off and on for 
a dozen hours past. As a result they were fairly 
tired — the strain and excitement of being under 
fire are even more physically exhausting some- 
how than hard bodily labour — and might have 
been hard to rouse. But the magic words ' ' The 
mail" woke them quicker than a round of gun- 
fire, and they sat up and rubbed the sleep from 
their eyes and clustered eagerly round the Num- 
ber One (sergeant in charge of the detachment) 
who was ''dishing out" the letters. Thereafter 
a deep silence fell on the dug-out, the recipients 
of letters crowding with bent heads round the 
guttering candle, the disappointed ones watch- 
ing them with envious eyes. 

An exclamation of deep disgust from the 
Signaller brought no comment until the last 

244 



THE SIGNALLER'S DAY 245 

letter was read, but then the Limber Gunner 
remembered and remarked on it. 

"What was that you was rearin' up an' 
snortin ' over, Signals 1 " he asked, carefully re- 
trieving a cigarette stump from behind his ear 
and lighting up. 

The Signaller snorted again. "Just 'ark at 
this," he said, unfolding his letter again. "I'll 
just read this bit, an' then I'll tell you the sort 
of merry dance I've 'ad to-day. This is from 
an uncle o' mine in London. 'E grouses a bit 
about the inconvenience o' the dark streets, an' 
then 'e goes on, 'Everyone at 'ome is wonderin' 
why you fellows don't get a move on an' do 
somethin'.' The official despatches keeps on 
sayin' "no movement," or "nothin' to report," 
or "all quiet," till it looks as if you was all 
asleep. Why don't you get up an' go for 
'emf " 

The Signaller paused and looked up. ' ' See I ' ' 
he said sarcastically. "Everyone at 'ome is won- 
derin', an' doesn't like this 'all quiet' business. 
I wish everyone at 'ome, including this uncle 
o' mine, 'ad been up in the trenches to-day." 

"Have a lively time?" asked the Number 
One. "We had some warmish spells back here. 
They had the range to a dot, and plastered us 
enthusiastic with six-an' eight-inch Johnsons 



246 BETWEEN THE LINES 

an' H.E. shrapnel. We'd three wounded an' 
lucky to get off so light." 

''Lively time's the right word for my per- 
formance, ' ' said the Signaller. ' ' Nothin ' of the 
'all quiet' touch in my little lot to-day. It 
started when we was goin' up at daybreak — me 
an' the other telephonist wi' the Forward Offi- 
cer. You know that open stretch of road that 
takes you up to the openin' o' the communica- 
tion trenches? Well, we're just nicely out in 
the middle o' that when Fizz comes a shell an' 
Bang just over our 'eads, an' the shrapnel rips 
down on the road just behind us. Then Bang- 
Bang-Bang they come along in a reg'lar string 
down the road. They couldn't see us, an' I 
suppose they was just shooting on the map in 
the hopes o' catching any reliefs o' the infan- 
try on the road. Most o' the shells was per- 
cussion, after the first go, an' they was slam- 
bangin' down in the road an' the fields along- 
side an ' flinging dirt and gravel in showers over 
us. 'Come on,' sez the Forward Officer; 'this 
locality is lookin' unhealthy,' an' we picked up 
our feet an' ran for it. Why we wasn't all 
killed about ten times each I'll never under- 
stand; but we wasn't, an' we got to the end 
o' the communication trench an' dived into it 
as thankful as any rabbit that ever reached 'is 



THE SIGNALLER'S DAY 247 

burrow with a terrier at 'is tail. After we got 
a bit o' breath back we ploughed along the 
trench — it was about ankle deep in bits — to the 
Infantry Headquarters, an' the F.O. goes in- 
side. After a bit 'e comes out an' tells me to 
come on wi' him up to the Observation Post. 
This was about eight ac emma (a.m.), an' just 
gettin' light enough to see. You know what 
that Observin' Post of ours is. The F.O. 'as 
a fond de-looshun that the Germs can't see you 
when you leave the support trench an' dodge up 
the wreckage of that hedge to the old house; 
but I 'ave my own opinions about it. Anyway 
I've never been up yet without a most un- 
natural lot o' bullets chippin' twigs off the 
hedge an' smackin' into the ditch. But we got 
into the house all right an' I unslings my Tele- 
phone — Portable — D Mark III., an' connects 
up with the Battery while the F.O. crawls up 
into the top storey. 'E hadn 't been there three 
minutes when smack . . . smack, I hears two 
bullets hit the tiles or the walls. The F.O. 
comes down again in about ten minutes an' has 
a talk to the Major at the Battery. He reports 
fairly quiet except some Germ Pip-Squeak shells 
droppin' out on our right, an' a good deal o' 
sniping rifle fire between the trenches in front 
of us. As a general thing I've no serious ob- 



248 BETWEEN THE LINES 

jection to the trenches snipin' each other, if 
only the Germs 'ud aim more careful. But 
mostly they aims shockin' an' anything that 
comes high for our trench just has the right 
elevation for our post. There's a broken win- 
dow on the ground floor too, lookin' out of the 
room we uses straight at the Boshies, an' the 
F.O. wouldn't have me block this up at no 
price. 'Concealment,' sez he, 'is better than 
protection. An' if they see that window sand- 
bagged up it's a straight tip to them this is a 
Post of some sort, an' a hearty invitation to 
them to plunk a shell or two in on us. ' Maybe 
'e was right, but you can 't well conceal a whole 
house or even the four walls o' one, so I should 
'ave voted for the protection myself. Anyhow, 
'e said I could build a barricade at the foot o ' 
the stairs, where I'd hear him call 'is orders 
down, an' I'd be behind some cover. This mo- 
tion was seconded by a bullet comin' in the 
window an' puttin' a hole in the eye o' a life- 
size enlargement photo of an old lady in a poke- 
bonnet hangin' on the wall opposite. The row 
of the splinterin' glass made me think a Jack 
Johnson had arrived, an' I didn't waste time 
gettin' to work on my barricade. I got a arm- 
chair an' the half of a sofa an' a broken-legged 
table, an' made that the foundation; an' up 



THE SIGNALLER'S DAY 249 

against the outside of them I stacked a lot o' 
table linen an' books an' loose bricks an' bot- 
tles an' somebody's Sunday clothes an' a fender 
an' fire-irons an' anything else I thought any 
good to turn a bullet. I finished up by prizin' 
up a hearthstone from the fireplace an' prop- 
pin' it up against the back o' the arm-chair an' 
sittin' down most luxurious in the chair an' 
lighting a cigarette. That's a long ways the 
most comfortable chair I've ever sat in — deep 
soft springy seat an' padded arms an' covered 
in red velvet — an' I was just thinkin' what a 
treat it was when I hears the rifle fire out in 
front begmnin' to brisk up, an' the Forward 
Officer calls down to me to warn the Battery 
to stand by because o' some excitement in the 
trenches. 'Major says would you like him to 
give them a few rounds, sir,' I shouts up, an' 
the F.O. says, 'Yes — three rounds gun-fire, on 
the lines the guns are laid.' So off goes your 
three rounds, an' I could hear your shells 
whoopin' along over our heads. 

" 'Number One gun add twenty-five yards,' 
calls down the F.O., an' then gives some more 
corrections an' calls for one round battery fire. 
By this time the rifle fire out in front was pretty 
thick and the bullets was hissin' an' whinin' 
past us an' crackin' on the walls. Another one 



250 BETWEEN THE LINES 

came through the window an' perforated the 
old lady's poke-bonnet, but none o' them was 
comin' near me, an' I was just about happily 
concludin' I wasn't in the direct line o' fire an' 
was well covered from strays. So I was snug- 
gin' down in my big easy chair with the D 
Mark Three on my knee, puffin' my pipe an' 
repeatin' the F.O.'s orders as pleasant as you 
please when crack! a bullet comes with an al- 
mighty smack through the back o' the arm- 
chair, bare inches off my ear. Comfort or no 
comfort, thinks I, this is where I resign the 
chair, an' I slides out an' squats well down 
on the wet floor. It's surprisin' too the amount 
o' wet an ordinary carpet can hold, an' the 
chap that designed the pattern o ' this one might 
'ave worked in some water lilies an' duckweed 
instead o' red roses an' pink leaves, if he'd 
known 'ow it would come to be used. This 
'ouse 'as been rather a swagger one, judgin' 
by the style o' the furniture, but one end an' 
the roof 'aving gone west with the shellin' the 
whole show ain't what it might be. An' when 
the missus as it belongs to returns to 'er 'appy 
'ome there's going to be some fervent remarks 
passed about the Germs an' the war generally. 

"But to get on wi' the drill — the row in the 
trenches got hotter an' hotter, an' our house 



THE SIGNALLER'S DAY 251 

might 'ave been a high-power magnet for bul- 
lets, the way they was comin' in, through that 
open window special. The old lady lost an- 
other eye an' half an' ear, an' 'er Sunday gown 
an' a big gold brooch was shot to ribbons. A 
bullet cut the cord at last, an' the old girl came 
down bump. But I'd been watchin' 'er so long 
I felt she oughtn't to be disgraced lyin' there 
on 'er face before the German fire. So I 
crawled out an' propped 'er up against the 
wall with 'er face to the window. I 'ope she 'd 
be glad to know 'er photo went down with flyin' 
poke-bonnet. 

1 ' It was shortly after this our wire was first 
cut — about ten ac emma (a.m.) that would be. 
I sings out to the F.O. that I was cut off, but 
what wi' the bullets smackin' into the walls, 
the shells passin' over us, the Coal Boxes burst- 
ing around, an' the trenches belting off at their 
hardest, the F.O. didn't 'ear me an' I 'ad to 
crawl up the stairs to 'im. Just as I got td 
the top a shrap burst, an' the bullets came 
smashin' an' tearin' down thro' the tiles an' 
rafters. The bullets up there was whistlin' an' 
whinin' past an' over like the wind in a ship's 
riggin', an' every now an' then whack! one 
would hit a tile, sending the dust an' splinters 
jumpin'. The F.O. was crouched up in one 



252 BETWEEN THE LINES 



corner where a handful o' tiles was still clingin', 
an' he was peepin' out through these with 'is 
field glasses. 'Keep down,' 'e sez when 'e saw 
me. * There's a brace o' blanky snipers been 
tryin' for a cold 'alf-hour to bull's-eye on to 

me. There they go again ,' an' crack . . . 

smack two bullets comes, one knockin' another 
loose tile off, a foot over 'is 'ead, an' t'other 
puttin' a china ornament on the mantelpiece 
on the casualty list. 

' 'I reported the wire cut an' the F.O. sez he'd 
come along wi' me an' locate the break. 'We'll 
have to hurry,' he says, 'cos it looks to me as 
if a real fight was breezin ' up. ' So we crawled 
out along the ditch an' down the trench, fol- 
lowin' the wire. We found the break — there 
was three cuts — along that bit o ' road that runs 
from the Rollin' River Trench down past the 
Bomb Store, an' I don't ever want a more 
highly excitin' job than we had mendin' it. 
The shells was fair rainin' down that road, an' 
the air was just hum m in' like a harpstring wi' 
bullets an' rickos (ricochets). We joined up 
an' tapped in an' found we was through all 
right, so we hustled back to the Post. That 
'ouse never was a real 'ealth resort, but to-day 
it was suthin' wicked. They must 'ave sus- 
picioned there was a Post there, an' they kep' 



THE SIGNALLER'S DAY 253 

on pastin' shells at us. How they missed us 
so often, Heaven an' that German gunner only 
knows. They couldn't get a direct with solid, 
but I must admit they made goodish shootin' 
wi' shrapnel, an' they've made that 'ouse look 
like a second- 'and pepper-caster. The F.O. was 
'avin' a most unhappy time with shrapnel an' 
rifle bullets, but 'e 'ad 'is guns in action, so 'e 
just 'ad to stick it out an' go on observin', till 
the wires was cut again. This time the F.O. 
sez to look back as far as the wire ran in the 
trench, an' if I didn't find the break up to there 
come back an' report to 'im. But I found the 
break in the hedge jus' outside, an' mended 
it an' went back, the bullets still zipping down 
an' me breakin' all the hands-an '-knees records 
for the fifty yards. I found the F.O. 'ad reined 
back a bit from 'is corner an' was busy wi' 
the bedroom poker breakin' out a loophole 
through the bricks of the gable-end wall. 'E 
came down an' told the Major about it. It 
was getting too hot, 'e said, an' the two snipers 
must 'ave 'im located wi' field-glasses. One 
bullet 'ad nearly blinded 'im wi' broken- tile 
dust, an' another 'ad tore a hole across the 
side of 'is 'British warm' (overcoat) ; so he was 
go in' to try observin' through a couple of loop- 
holes. Then 'e went up an' finished 'is chip- 



254 BETWEEN THE LINES 

pin' an' brought the guns into action again. 
Just in the middle o' a series I feels a most 
unholy crash, an' the whole house rocked on 
its toe an' heel. The brickdust an' plaster 
came rattlin' down, an' when the dust cleared 
a bit an' I got my sense an' my eyesight back, 
I could see a splintered hole in the far corner 
of my ceilin'. I made sure the F.O. upstairs 
was blotted out, 'cos it was that corner upstairs 
where 'is loophole was ; but next minute 'e sings 
out an' asks was I all right. I never felt less 
all right in my life, but I told 'im I was still 
alive, far as knew. I crawled up to see what 
'ad 'appened, an' there was 'im in one corner 
at 'is peep-'ole, an' the floor Mowed to splinters 
behind 'im an' a big gap bust in the gable wall 
at the other corner. A shell had made a fair hit 
just about on 'is one loophole, while he was 
lookin' thro' the other. 'I believe we'll 'ave 
to leave this,' he sez, 'an' move along to our 
other post. It's a pity, 'cos I can't see near 
as well.' 

" 'If we don't leave this 'ouse, sir,' I sez, 
'seems to me it'll leave us — an' in ha'penny 
numbers at that.' 

"So he reports to the Major, an' I packs up, 
an' we cleared. The shelling had slacked off 



THE SIGNALLER'S DAY 255 

a bit, though the trenches was still slingin' lead 
hard as ever. 

11 'We must hurry,' sez the F.O. ' They 're 
going to bombard a trench for ten minutes at 
noon, and I must be in touch by then.' 

"We scurried round to the other post, and 
just got fixed up before the shoot commenced. 
And in the middle of it — phutt goes first one 
wire an' then the other. The F.O. said things 
out loud when I told him. 'Come along,' he 
finished up; 'we must mend it at once. The in- 
fantry assault a trench at the end of the ten 
minutes. There they go now,' and we heard 
the roar of the rifles swell up again. He took 
a long stare out through his glasses and then 
we doubled out. The Germs must have thought 
there was a big assault on, and their gunners 
were putting a zone of fire behind the trenches 
to stop supports coming up. An' we had to 
go through that same zone, if you please. 
'Strewth, it was hot. There was big shells an' 
little shells an' middle-sized shells, roarin' an' 
shrieking up and bursting H.E. shrapnel or 
smashing into the ground. If there was one 
threw dirt over us there was a dozen. One 
buzzed close past and burst about twenty feet 
in front of the F.O., and either the windage or 
the explosion lifted him off his feet and clean 



256 BETWEEN THE LINES 

rolled him over. I thought he was a goner 
again, but when I came up to him he was pick- 
ing himself up, an' spittin' dirt an' language 
out between his teeth, an' none the worse ex- 
cept for the shakin'. We couldn't find that 
break. We had to tap in all along the wire to 
locate it and all the time it was a race be- 
tween us finding the break and a shell finding 
us. At last we got it, where we 'd run the wire 
over a broke-up shed. The F.O. was burnin' 
to talk to the battery, knowing they'd be 
anxious about their shoot, so he picked a spot 
in the lee of a wall an' told me to tap in on 
the wire there. Just as he began talkin' to 
the Battery a Coal-Box soars up an' bumps 
down about twenty yards away and beyond us. 
The F.O. looks up, but goes on talkin'; but 
when another shell, an' then another, drops 
almost on the exact same spot, he lifted the 
'phone closer in to the wall and stoops well 
down to it. I needn't tell you I was down as 
close to the ground as I could get without dig- 
ging. 'I think we're all right here,' sez the 
F.O., when another shell bust right on the old 
spot an' the splinters went singin' over us. 
'They look like keepin' on the same spot, and 
we must be out of the line the splinters take. ' 
"It looked like he was right, for about three 



THE SIGNALLER'S DAY 257 

more fell without touchin' us, and I was feel- 
ing a shade easier in my mind. There was some 
infantry comin' up on their way to the support 
trenches, an' they filed along by the wall that 
was coverin' us. Just as they was passin' an- 
other shell dropped. It was on the same spot 
as all the others, but blow me if it didn't get 
three of them infantry. They fell squirmin' 
right on top o' us an' the instrument, so I con- 
cluded that spot wasn't as safe as the F.O. 
had reckoned, an' there was a flaw in 'is argu- 
ment somewheres that the Coal-Box 'ad found 
out. The F.O. saw that too, an' we shifted out 
quick time. After that things quietened down 
a bit, an' the short hairs on the back o' my 
neck had time to lie down. They stood on end 
again once or twice in the afternoon, when we'd 
some more repairin' under fire to do; an' then 
to wind up the day they turned a maxim on 
just as we was comin' away from the post, an' 
we had to flop on our faces with the bullets 
zizz-izz-ipping just over us. "We took a trench, 
I hear; an' the Jocks in front of us had thirty 
casualties, and the Guards on our left 'ad some 
more, 'cos I seed 'em comin' back to the 
ambulance. 

"On the 'ole, it's been about the most un- 
pleasantest day I've spent for a spell. "What 



258 BETWEEN THE LINES 

wi' wadin' to the knees in the trench mud, get- 
ting soaked through wi' rain, not 'aving a 
decent meal all day, crawlin' about in mud an' 
muck, an' gettin' chivvied an' chased all over 
the landscape wi' shells an' shrapnel an' 
machine-guns an' rifles, I've just about 'ad 
enough o' this King an' Country game." 

The Signaller paused a moment. But his 
gaze fell on the letter he still held in his hand, 
and he tapped it with a scornful finger and 
burst out again violently: ''King an' Country 
— huh ! An ' a bald- 'eaded blighter sittin ' warm 
an' dry an' comfortable by 'is fireside at 'ome 
writes out an' tells me what the Country's 
thinkin'. I come in 'ere after a day that's 
enough to turn the 'air of a 'earse-'orse grey, 
an' I'm told about my pals bein' casualtied; an' 
to top it all I gets a letter from 'ome — 'why 
don 't you do somethin ' I Why don 't you get up 
an' go for 'em?' Ar-r-rh!!" 

" 'Ome," remarked the Limber Gunner. 
" 'Ome don't know nuthin' about it." 

"They don't," agreed the Signaller. "But 
what I wants to know — an ' there 's a many 'ere 
like me — is why don't somebody let 'em know 
about it ; let 'em really know. ' ' 



